The rise of intellectual liberty from Thales to Copernicus

THE EISE

OF

INTELLECTUAL LIBEETY

FROM THALES TO COPERNICUS

BY

FREDERIC MAY HOLLAND

AUTHOR OF " THE REIGN OF THE STOICS," " STORIES FROM ROBERT-
BROWNING," ETC.

UNIVERSIT

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

1885

H

COPYRIGHT, 1885,

BY
HENRY HOLT & CO.

W. I* MERSHON & Co.,

Printers and Electrotypers

RAHWAY, N. J,

PREFACE.

Wishing to show how thought was set free and new
truth brought to light, during the twenty-two hundred years
from the age of Thales to that of Copernicus and Servetus, I
have tried to collect the important facts, especially such as
had not been stated in English, to arrange them in their his-
toric relations, not yet fully delineated in any language, and
then to let them tell their own story, without needless com-
ment. I did not start with the intention of proving any thing;
and it was only when I was ready to write the last chapter,
that I found myself justified in drawing the conclusions set
forth. Authorities differ widely, especially about medieval his-
tory, and dates of publication are often given incorrectly — that?
for instance of the Involuntary Servitude by La Boetie being
put in half-a-dozen different years by as many of the standard
books of reference. Oversights are almost unavoidable in any
comprehensive work, and I shall be grateful for help in cor-
recting my own, but I trust I shall not be hastily charged
with inaccuracy on account of not having followed a popular
guide. I hope ere long to publish a continuation extending
as far as the French Revolution.

F. M. EL

Concord, Mass., Nov., 1884.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. EARLY PHILOSOPHY.

PAGE

Introduction 1

I. The Buddha and other Prophets 1

II. The lonians 3

III. Persecution at Athens 7

IV. Socrates 16

V. Plato 24

VI. Other Disciples of Socrates 28

VII. Aristotle 32

VIII. Conclusion 35

CHAPTER II. THE CONQUEST OF PAGANISM DURING THE LAST THREE
CENTURIES, B. C.

Introduction 36

I. Pyrrho and the New Academy 36

II. The Stoics 38

III. Epicurus 41

IV. Lucretius 51

V. Science - 57

VI. Victory 59

CHAPTER III. PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS AT REACTION DUR-
ING THE FIRST Two HUNDRED YEARS OF THE ROMAN
EMPIRE.

I. The Policy of Augustus Cl

II. Jesus 65

III. The Stoic Martyrs 70

IV. The Emancipation of Women 76

V. The New Testament 78

VI. The Early Christians 82

Ti. CONTENTS.

PAGE.

VII. Reign of Liberal Paganism 8&

VIII. Lucian 91

IX. Conclusion 95

CHAPTER IV. THE SUPPRESSION OP FREE THOUGHT AND ESTABI.I-H-
MENT OP CHRISTIANITY.

I. Tertullian 97

I" II. The Alexandrians and their Pupils, including Zenobia . . . 101

III. The Decline of the Empire, the Result of Despotism .... lOrt

IV. The Establishment of Christianity 109

V. Triumph of Bigotry 119

VI. General Survey of Classical Thought 122

CHAPTER V. EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY.

I. Rationalists before A. D. 1,000 126

II. Berengar, Roscellin and tho Catharists 131

III. Other Early Agitators 140

IV. Abelard and Heloise 144

V. Averroes and Maimonides 153

VI. Waldenses and Mystics 154

VII. Conclusion • 158

CHAPTER VI. SUPPRESSION OP HERESY, DUALISM AND PERSECUTION
OP MYSTICISM AND SCHOLARSHIP IN THE THIRTEENTH
CENTURY.

I. The Situation * 162

II. The Crusade against Tolerance 164

III. The Destruction of Catharism by the Inquisition 169

IV. The Persecution of Mysticism 174

V. Satirists and Rationalists 178

VI. Royal and Popular Resistance to Oppression 185

VII. Summary 196

;

CHAPTER VII. THE REVOLT OP FRANCE AND GERMANY ix THE
FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

I. The Situation 200

II. Philip and Boniface 201

III. TheTemplars 208

IV. Dolcino 211

V. Dante 213

VI. TheMystics 020

VII. Loui9 of Bavaria 230

VIII. Other Opponents of the Papacy before 1360- 233

IX. Summary 238

CONTENTS.

vii.

PAGB.

CHAPTER VIII. OPPOSITION IN NAME OP BIBLE AND COUNCILS, 1360
TO 1450.

I. Introduction 241

II. Wycliffe and his followers 241

III. The Bohemians 251

IV. The Great Councils 257

V. Joan of Arc and other Mystics. . 261

VI. Retrospect over Medieval History 268

CHAPTER IX. THE REVIVAL OP LEARNING, LITERATURE, AND ART,
1450 TO 1517.

I. The Revival of Letters 275

II. Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Pomponatius 283

III. Art and other Secular Influences in Italy 292

IV. The Northern Renaissance 298

V. Satirists 305

VI. Savonarola and the German Mystics 319

VII. Summary 325

CHAPTER X. THE REFORMATION.

I. TheSituation 327

II. The Establishment of Protestantism 328

III. Erasmus and other Liberal Catholics 336

IV. Copernicus and other Practical Reformers 342

V. Rabelais and other Nominal Catholics 352

VI. Servetus and other Liberal Protestants 362

VII. Unbelievers in Christianity 376

VIII. Summary 380

CHAPTER XI. CONCLUSION.

Harmonious Movements 385

Growth of Tolerance 387

Emancipation of Women 389

Political Liberty. 391

Book Men 893

Causes of Conservatism 397

Morality of Unbelievers 399

Happiness 401

CHAPTEK I. JVI

EAELY PHILOSOPHY.

^IFOflfi^

Five and twenty centuries ago, scarcely any man rose above
the station in which he was born. Few could choose even
what to do, much less what to think. There were no teachers
but the priests. Urgent business was constantly delayed,
and atrocious crimes instigated, by dread of signs and omens.
All the keys of knowledge were in hands busy with slaying sac-
rifices, pointing out auguries, and collecting fees. Rulers,
priests, and people worked together to keep things as they
were, and make every one think and act alike. The estab-
lishment of order had been necessary for social existence, but
there was constant danger of the stagnation • that always
breeds corruption.

That the earth is brighter and richer to-day than it was
then is largely due to men and women who toiled and died to
stir up mental activity and encourage individuality. Widely
different beliefs and unbeliefs have worked together in the rise
of Intellectual Liberty! What its early champions wrote and
suffered, and how their exertions are connected with other
forces, is here told up to the time when its worst enemy was
crippled by the Reformation, when Copernicus made possible
a rational view of the Universe, and when the murder of
Servetus called out a mighty protest against intolerance.

The oldest denunciations of despotism and convention-
alism which have come down to us, are those of the He-
brew prophets. History can show few grander figures
than those of Moses before Pharaoh and Elijah on
Mount Carmel ; nor has the superior holiness of morality
above ceremony, a truth incompatible with the authority of
priests, ever been set forth more fearlessly than by Amos,

2 EAEL T PHILOSOPHY. [600 B. c.

Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah. These great men, how-
ever, were too intolerant, as well as too desirous of supernat-
ural inspiration to be classed among rationalists, though these
latter have often been aided by their example.

So also it was in the name of special revelation, rather than
of reason, that the great emancipation from Brahmin despotism
was achieved by that glorious liberator who called himself the
Buddha, or Enlightened, and whose existence is beyond all
question, though his biography is full of fables, and his death
is put at various dates from 24:22 to 400 B. c. His adherents were
probably those mendicant monks and nuns whose opposition
to Brahminism in Western India was noticed about 300 B. c.
by the Greek ambassador, Megasthenes. Buddhism appears
also to have prevailed in Bactria, while this country was under
Grecian Kings. There is plainly mention of the Buddha
and his mother by Clement of Alexandria, who shows that
Hindoo thought was known to Alexander Polyhistor, an
Ephesian or Phrygian scholar who lived nearly a century ear-
lier than Jesus. That the author of the Sermon on the Mount
was under the influence of the Dhammapada, or Path of
Virtue, is not improbable, since these two works agree in hold-
ing such views of poverty and non-resistance as are not at
all Hebraic. And Buddhism is certainly to be honored for
that fearless opposition to priestly tyranny which has caused
it, despite its recognizing no book as infallible, to be called
the Protestantism of the East, for that emancipation of mo-
rality from theology which has enabled thousands of millions
to live in virtue and happiness, and finally for that unexam-
pled tolerance, which makes this the only religion not known
to have stained itself with systematic persecution for differ-
ences in belief, and which led the great monarch of all India,
Asoka, who first made this a state-religion, about 250 B. c., to
practice suchHoleration as was scarcely known in Christendom
before the present century. The more men have thought they
knew about the Incomprehensible, the less they have hesitated
about murdering any one who would not accept their creed.

Modern Buddhism has its superstitions, and its monks,
nuns, and priests ; but they are kept from much temptation

600 B. c.] THE IONIANS. 3

by their freedom to leave their order at pleasure ; and while
in it, they teach the people so faithfully, that Mrs. Leonow-
ens says, there is scarcely a man or woman in Siam who cannot
read and write. ( The English Governess, p. 78). Still this
hierarchy, like all others, has little sympathy with science or
advanced thought. Buddhism has been a great help to Ceylon,
Burmah, Siam, China, Thibet, and Japan ; but, as these coun-
tries advance, it must be left behind and pass away. It has
done the world inestimable service by preaching and prac-
ticing self-control, but it has done very little in comparison to
promote self-culture.

Neither the Buddha nor the Hebrew prophets appealed so
directly to the authority of reason as Kapila is said to have
done in founding the Sankhya philosophy in India ; but we
know little of this last system, except that it has had scarcely
any influence on Western thought.

ii.

Europe did receive its first light from Asia, but it was not
from the valley of the Ganges. On the shores of the ^Egean,
the birthplace of Homer, ^Esop, Herodotus, and Apelles, the
cradle of liberty, the center of art and commerce, in a land
still noted for its climate and its scenery, dwelt the first men
who are known to have loved truth for its own sake, and to
have sought to explain natural phenomena rationally. There,
about 600 B. c., was founded the Ionic school of philosophy,
by Thales, one of the seven wise men, and father of Grecian
astronomy. He left nothing in writing, and it is doubtful
how much truth there is in the reports that he traveled in
search of knowledge to Egypt, and there measured the height
of a pyramid, that he found out the number of days in the
solar year, that he suspected the rotundity of our earth, that
he foretold an eclipse, and that he knew that moonlight comes
from the sun. He seems, at all events, to have taught that
the earth with all her forms of life developed herself out of
water which he called the source of all things, and to have
maintained that the sun, moon, and stars, which the Greeks
worshiped as deities, were only masses of matter like our

EARL Y PHILOSOPHY. [600 B. c.

earth. The same love of liberty, which led him to place him-
self in this opposition to the prevalent theology, is also shown
in his defending the independence of Ionia against Croesus, and
in such sayings as that, the most dangerous of wild beasts are
the tyrants. Nearly as early as Thales and in the same city,
Miletus, lived Anaximander, said to have been the first to
write about philosophy, to draw maps, to make hydraulic
clocks, to introduce sun-dials, and to try to calculate the sizes
and distances of the sun, moon, and planets, which, as well as
our earth, he said, had formed themselves out of chaos, and
would return thither again. He also taught that all land animals
had been evolved out of marine ones, and that all creatures,
even human beings, would finally resolve themselves into the
chaotic mass, out of which they arose. Thus Anaximander
may be called the " earliest evolutionist." Similar views of
the self-developing powers of matter and the finite nature of
man were held soon afterwards by another Milesian, An axime-
nes, who distinguished himself by his efforts to overthrow the
popular belief, that rain, lightning, earthquakes, etc., are su-
pernatural. Hippo, of Samos, the first Greek who denied the
existence of the national gods, is also placed among the Ionic
philosophers.

This term is not however applied to a much more famous
Samian, Pythagoras, who was so far from being a liberator
as to found a despotic and aristocratic secret society, soon
broken up by popular indignation, under which he perished.
His wife, Theano, was the first woman to write about philos-
ophy. In Ionia was also born Xenophanes, who boasted that
he was no man's pupil, and who wandered, chanting his own
verses, until he made his way to the Italian city from whose
name he and his disciples are called Eleatics. They did not
study physical phenomena, like the lonians, but logical sub-
tleties ; and they attached much less value to the testimony
of the senses, than to the conclusions of the unaided reason.
This way of thinking, which has since prevailed among meta-
physicians, soon led to utter uncertainty of opinion, as was
particularly the case with Parmenides, hero of one of Plato's
dialogues, and as much noted for his virtues as his doubts.

500 B. c.] THE IONIANS. 5

The Zeno, who died bravely in trying to free Elea from, the
tyranny of Nearchus, also belonged to this school, whose skep-
tical position he strengthened with some famous paradoxes,
for instance that of Achilles and the tortoise. None of the
literary productions of the Eleatics, not even the declara-
tion of Melissus, that nothing can be known about the
gods, became so famous, however, as the verses of Xeno-
phanes, who thought that all things and beings were joined
together, so as to form,

" God, who is One, and the greatest of beings divine, and
resembles neither in body us mortals, nor spirit."

And among other fragments of the oldest of philosophic
poems are these:

"Not from the first did the gods reveal to us knowledge

of all things,
Only in process of time, does research give us truth in her

fullness."

*******

" Foolishly men have supposed that the gods are born like

us mortals,
Having their garments like ours, and with human voices and

figures.

Give to the lions, horses, and oxen, fingers and hands like
Ours, then oxen would paint their gods in the likeness of

oxen,
Horses too, give their deities, bodies like those of the horses."

*******

" Deeds of the gods are narrated by Homer and Hesiod, also,
Which would be shame and abiding disgrace unto any poor

mortal,
left and deceit and adultery, acts above all most unrighteous."

A generation later than Xenophanes, and in the great Ionic
iity of Ephesus, lived Heraclitus the Obscure, who long after-
rards was erroneously termed " The Weeping Philosopher."1
[e seems to have been the first to teach that all natural
)henomena take place necessarily, that is according to fixed

6 EARLY PHILOSOPHY. [475 B. c.

laws, independent of supernatural control, and to denounce
the current belief in lucky and unlucky days, the orgies in
honor of Bacchus, the worship of idols, and even the offering
of sacrifices, in regard to which he says that a man might as
well think he could wash his body with mud, as that blood
would purify his soul. He held that all things are in con-
tinual motion and development, so that it may with equal
truth be said that they are, and that they are not. Thus he
may be regarded as the forerunner of Hegel, but he differed
from this German in teaching that not only the sun, moon,
and stars, the plants, animals, and various parts of our earth,
but even the souls of men, are only the changing forms of
the all-animating and all-composing vital heat. Here he re-
sembled the Ionic philosophers, among whom he is ranked by
some high authorities ; but he should rather be placed midway
between this school and the Elean, for while giving more au-
thority than these latter did to the senses he yet attributed
the power of reaching the highset truth to the reason acting
independently of sensation. Among his extant sayings are
these : " No man can bathe twice in the same stream," " War
is the father of all things," " A man's character is his des-
tiny," " The world was not created by any God or man, but
has always existed, and always will exist, an ever-living fire."
Our list of early philosophers, outside of Athens, must close
with two Sicilian poets of the fifth century B. c., Empedocles
and Epicharmus. The former was noted for his devotion to
popular liberty, his generous philanthropy, his opposition to
anthropomorphism, and his knowledge of medicine, meteor-
ology and other sciences, in studying which he seems to have
perished by an eruption of ^Etna. He is also famous for his
theory of the origin of all things out of the spontaneous
attraction and repulsion of the four elements, earth, air,
water, and fire, which at first produced only ephemeral
monsters, but gradually developed forms more and more
fitted for survival, and finally created man. Epicharmus, who
like Empedocles had studied among the Pythagoreans, was
one of the earliest writers of comedy, and took particular
pains to make the gods and sacred heroes ridiculous, as well

432 B. c.] PERSECUTION AT ATHENS. 7

as to represent religion arising out of the deification of
natural forces.

These primitive philosophers had not the scientific ap-
paratus, the society of fellow-students, and the light of past
experience necessary for sure knowledge of truth, but their
crude fancies had such originality and independence as
opened the way for better work. That there was no persecu-
tion in Ionia may be attributed to the early date at which this
country passed under the sway of the Persians, who hated
idolatry, polytheism, and anthropomorphism, and who wor-
shiped nothing but fire, a position curiously resembling that
of Heraclitus. Xenophanes taught among Ionian colonists
whose mental habits were so similar to his own that he
founded a school of disciples ; and Empedocles was deservedly
popular on account of his great services to liberty and his
generous use of his rare medical skill and vast wealth.

in.

The first city within the present limits of Greece to wel-
-come the new views was Athens, where ^Eschylus was
allowed to represent the supreme Deity as the oppressor of
mankind in his Prometheus, a drama whose effect may have
been lessened by that of a continuation which has not come
down to us. But here the philosophers soon suffered a series
of persecutions, at first mainly instigated by political opposi-
tion to their patron, Pericles, but kept up in that fear of the
wrath of the gods which was called forth by the Peloponne-
sian war.

The earliest martyr was Anaxagoras, who came from Ionia
during the war with Xerxes, to Athens, where he taught
Euripides, Thucydides, Aspasia, and Pericles. His chief pe-
culiarity is the introduction of intelligence as the source of
life and motion. He did not give this power self-conscious-
ness or personality, but he made it play so prominent a part
that he was nicknamed " Intelligence." Partly under this
guidance, and partly under that of the laws of matter, he
supposed all things to be formed out of an infinite number of

8 EARL T PHILOSOPHY. [432 B. c,

little particles, which resemble their products in nature, and
originally existed as chaos. From the union and separation
of these seeds of life come birth and death. The soul is part
of the universal intelligence and thus able to judge the cor-
rectness of the information which the senses furnish, though
not to produce knowledge independently. It is to our posses-
sion of hands that he ascribes our superiority over the lower
animals. His own favorite study was astronomy, and he was
wont to say that it was for this end that he was born. When
charged with lack of patriotism, he pointed up into the sky
and said, " Behold my country." He seems to have been the
first to explain the causes of eclipses, as well as of the rising
of the Nile. He is also said to have predicted the fall of a
meteorite, which he might easily have done by noticing when
such phenomena are most frequent annually. Like other
Ionian philosophers, he taught that the sun is a ball of burn-
ing matter, and this so offended the Athenians, who wor-
shiped it as Apollo, that he was accused of a capital crime,
according to a decree, proposed by a priest named Diopeithes,
and providing that any denial of the national religion, or
philosophizing about the gods, should be punished as treason.
Pericles tried in vain to defend his teacher, who was banished,,
or according to other accounts, fled before the trial, and at all
events died in exile.

Similar charges were actually presented against his beauti-
ful and brilliant pupil, Aspasia, the friend of Socrates and
mistress and counselor of Pericles, who succeeded in having^
her acquitted. The banishment of his music teacher, Damon,
seems also to have been due in part at least to bigotry.
And this was certainly the cause of the temporary rejection
of the more accurate system of measuring the year, proposed
with the sanction of Pericles by Meton the astronomer,
whose cycle of nineteen years exceeded the real period by Irss
than ten hours, whereas there was a loss during this time of
more than three days according to the eight-year method in
use. In 432, while Meton, Damon, Aspasia, and Anaxagoras
were being treated thus, Phidias, who had but just finished
his famous Jupiter at Olympus, was prosecuted for the im-

413 B. c.] PERSECUTION AT ATHENS. 9

piety of introducing figures of himself and Pericles on the
shield of his Minerva, and died in prison. And the banish-
ment a few years later of a general who was greatly needed,
Thucydides, seems partly due to his having held the views of
Anaxagoras, as is plain from his language, in his history,
about an event which soon showed how much Athens lost in
holding fast to theology and rejecting science.

Forty thousand of her soldiers, among them many of her
best citizens, had failed in an attack on Syracuse, and were
about to save themselves from destruction by retreating in the
night of August 27, 413, when the moon became eclipsed.
The prophets declared that this was a sign of the wrath of
Diana, and that she could not be appeased, unless the army
remained quiet for the next twenty-seven days. So the re-
treat was given up, and the Athenians waited a whole week,
watching their enemies hem them in more and more securely.
At last fear got the better of superstition, and they undertook
a retreat, which resulted in immediate rout and general mas-
sacre. The few survivors were sold into slavery, and the
generals killed themselves in prison to avoid execution. An
irreparable injury was thus inflicted on the city which repre-
sented popular liberty and high culture, as no other did for
many centuries. This ruinous defeat under Nicias, as well as
that of the Thebans under Pelopidas in 364, might have been
prevented, and both these generals saved from death, if they
had been able to assure their soldiers, as Pericles and Dion
did under similar circumstances, that eclipses are not signs of
divine wrath.

And that the failure in Sicily, which brought on the fall of
Athens and a pause in political and intellectual progress, was
largely the result of religious bigotry is plain from the fact
that the sending to Syracuse of the irresistible Spartan com-
mander was due to the persuasions of Alcibiades, who had
abandoned his country because, while gallantly leading the
very army whose fate has just been recorded, he had been
put on trial for his life, on a charge of having mutilated
statues of Mercury, and having parodied the Eleusinian mys-
teries, spectacular illustrations of future rewards and punish-

10 EAELY PHILOSOPHY. [413 B. a

merits. On his refusal to appear before the judges, he was
•condemned to death, his property was confiscated, and the
priests cursed him in the name of all the gods.

It was the news of this sentence that provoked him to go to
•Sparta, reveal the plans and weaknesses of Athens, and urge
her enemies to send aid to Syracuse and to take permanent
possession of Deceleia, the key to Attica. These terrible blows
he followed up by persuading Chios and other Ionian allies of
Athens to revolt, and Persia to give large sums to Sparta.
He soon deserted the Peloponnesians, however, was invited
by the Athenian soldiers and sailors to their camp during a
revolution instigated by himself, gained at their head great
victories, ending with the conquest of Byzantium, made truce
with Persia, and returned in triumph to Athens. Her people
welcomed him with great rejoicing, revoked his sentence, and
gave him supreme command. Unfortunately he landed on
the day when the statue of Minerva was taken to the sea to be
bathed and clothed in new garments, and when the city was
supposed to be in such affliction at the absence^of her favorite
<leity, that no public business could be performed. The
priests renewed the 'charge of impiety, and took advantage
of a disaster, caused by the disobedience of a subordinate, to
deprive Athens of the only man who could have averted her fall.

Great as were the faults of Alcibiades, it must not be for-
gotten, that the charge which was most urged against him,
was that of mutilation of the Mercuries, in which there is no
evidence that he took part, and also that after his second con-
demnation he did his best to save his country from that crush-
ing defeat at ^gospotami which closed the war. The whole
intellectual and political history of Europe would have been
much brighter, if Athens could have been more tolerant to-
wards Alcibiades and Anaxagoras.

Among the latter's pupils was the great poet whom Mrs.
Browning calls,

" Our Euripides the human,

With his droppings of warm tears,
And his touching of things common
Till they rose to touch the spheres."

413 B. c.] PERSECUTION AT ATHENS. 11

Her husband, who has enabled us to see, not only the depth
of pathos, but the full scenic beauty of the Alcestis, has told
us how its author was driven from Athens by the bitter
satire of Aristophanes, who defended the old order of faith.
The Syracusans are said to have showed mercy to every
Athenian who could quote Euripides ; but his ninety tragedies
won only five prizes, while those of Sophocles received twenty ;
and the philosophic dramatist narrowly escaped prosecution
for making Hippoly tus deny the obligation of an oath to conceal
a guilty secret. We can still read in his Ion, and in fragments
of Sisyphus, JSelleropkon, etc., how he invoked air as the real
Jupiter ; how he suffered Ion to censure Apollo for his violence
to Creusa, and to declare that if this deity and the other gods
should make proper atonement to the victims of their guilty
loves, it would strip their temples ; how he ascribed all be-
lief in religion to a benevolent fraud, designed to frighten
people into good behavior, and how he even ventured to say :
" Doth any man assert that there are gods

In Heaven? I answer there are none : let him
Who contradicts me, like a fool, no longer

Quote ancient fables ; but observe the fact,
Nor to my words give credence. Kings, I say,
Kill many, but rob more of their possessions,
And violating every sacred oath,

Lay waste whole cities ; yet, tho' they act thus,
Are more successful far than they who lead

In constant piety a tranquil life.
And I have known small cities who revere

The gods made subject to unrighteous power,
Vanquished by spears more numerous. But I deem

Should any sluggard 'mong you pray to Heaven,
Nor earn by his own labor a subsistence,

He soon would learn whether the gods are able
To shield him from calamitous events."
[WoodhulPs Translation vol. III. p. 343. See also pp. 114,
and 388].

Similar language was used by Diagoras, a poet from Melos,
who could not reconcile the massacre and enslavement of his

12 EARL T PHILOSOPHY. [411 B. c.

innocent fellow citizens, with the existence of any gods. Be-
sides open atheism, he ventured to disclose the Eleusinian
secrets, and also to fling a wooden statue of Hercules into the
fire, with the words : " There is a thirteenth labor for you ! ""
He was accused at Athens in 411, but took flight before the
trial ; on which a reward of about a thousand dollars was
offered to any one who should kill him, and twice as much
for his capture alive. He is said to have perished in a storm-
during his flight, but some relate that he saved himself from
being treated like Jonah, by pointing to various other ships,,
which were in danger, and saying " Do you suppose that each of
them has a Diagoras on board?" One of the last of the
Ionic philosophers, Diogenes of Apollonia, is said to have
been in similar danger at Athens, but perhaps he has been
confounded with Diagoras.

The Melian atheist is said to have been much influenced by
Democritus, who belongs in this period chronologically,,
though he did not stay long enough in Athens to suffer any
persecution, except the attempt of Plato to destroy his books.
These amounted to sixty treatises on music, physiology, mo-
rality, metaphysics, astronomy, geography, physiology, mathe-
matics, optics, painting, agriculture, botany, medicine, diet,,
tactics, etc., but only fragments are extant. His most noted
doctrine is the atomic theory, derived from Li'ucippus, of
whom little else is known, and presenting as the basis of all'
existence, an infinite number of infinitesimal and indivisible
particles, differing only in size, shape, and position, keeping-
up an incessant motion according to mechanical laws, and
thus forming all things, even the soul iself, which is subject to-
dissolution like the body. Besides these atoms and the
vacuum, or space in which they move, nothing can be cer-
tainly known to exist according to Democritus, who, however,
does not deny the existence of the gods, though he attributes
to them but slight power, and supposes belief in them to be
mainly an inference from dreams. Our ideas of Deity, as
well as of the atoms and the vacuum, are so dim that absolute
truth is sunk in a bottomless pit, the knowledge derived from
the senses being only relative. This system took a great step

411 B. c.] PERSECUTION AT ATHENS. 13

towards making morality independent of theology by teaching
that pleasure and pain are the tests of what is useful or injur-
ious, and thus the natural guides of man towards his chief end,
happiness ; a theory elaborately expounded afterwards by the
Epicureans, utilitarians, and evolutionists. Such was the wis-
•dom won by Democritus through study of all previous philos-
ophies, and travel through Greece, Italy, Egypt, Arabia, and
Persia ; and thus did he show that he was sprung from
lonians who had fled across the sea to Thrace in search of lib-
erty. Among his maxims which have come down to us are
the following :

" Not every pleasure is to be chosen, but only that which is
noble." " Only they who hate injustice are dear to the gods."
" More people become good by effort than by nature." " We
should not abstain from crime out of fear, but out of regard
for duty." "It is good, not only to do no wrong, but to
wish to do none." " Speech is the shadow of action." " To
conquer self is the noblest victory." " The wrong-doer is
more unhappy than the wronged." "Reverence should be
shown openly, and truth spoken bravely." " It is the sign of a
great soul to be able to bear with others." " Delay spoils a
gift." "Agreement nourishes friendship." " lie who has no
friend is not worthy to live." " Give even a little, rather than
promise much." " They who blame readily are not fitted for
friendship." "He who praises the foolish harms them
greatly." " It is the fool who despises what he has and longs
for what he has not." " The sign of liberty is freedom of
speech."

The title of " Laughing Philosopher " was not given him
until three hundred years after his death. More in harmony
with the known facts, is the story that he was the first to dis-
sect animals. It is not he, but his contemporary Hippocrates,
however, who seems entitled to the honor of having been the
first to teach that diseases are of natural not supernatural
origin, and are to be cured, not -by prayers and sacrifices, but
by diet and medicine. He was of priestly birth, but gener-
ously gave up the claims of his own order, from whose sway
Grecian science now began to rescue medicine, as had been

14 EARLY PHILOSOPHY. [411 B. c.

already attempted with meteorology and astronomy, and as-
was essayed in regard to ethics by Democritus.

And the same city, Abdera in Thrace, which was the birth-
place of the great Atomist, was also that of Protagoras, who,
in the year that Diagoras was persecuted, 411, was banished
from Athens for commencing a book with the confession :
" As to the gods I do not know whether they exist or not ;
since such knowledge is impossible for many reasons, es-
pecially the difficulty of the subject and the shortness of the
life of man." The forerunner of agnosticism was drowned in
his voyage from Athens. His books were taken away from
the owners and burned in the market-place, the earliest instance
of this sin against knowledge. He went so far in asserting
the rights of free thought, as to teach that whatever appears
true to any one is true for him, so that each man is the
measure of all things. He also held that all our knowledge is
relative, that matter is the substance beneath all phenomena,
and that pleasure is the sole motive for action. The theory,
that virtuous means simply pleasurable on the whole and with
reference to ultimate as well as immediate results, while
vicious means painful, is fully stated by Plato, though only as
one to which Socrates compels assent from Protagoras, who
is further represented as enjoying great honor throughout
Greece, a fact shown in his title of " The Wisdom," Sophia.
It was his claim to teach this that led him to call himself a
Sophist. This name, which he was the first to take, meant
originally a teacher of useful knowledge, especially the arts
of eloquence and argument, which were particularly important
in Athens, where litigation was frequent, and every man had
to be his own lawyer. Protagoras was born in poverty, and
had first earned his living as a porter, so that he was obliged
to ask pay from his pupils, a custom followed by the other
Sophists, who thus are said by Plato to sell food for the mind,
a practice of which this wealthy aristocrat speaks with unde-
served contempt. Pericles and Euripides were among the
pupils and friends of Protagoras, who charged some two-
thousand dollars for a course of lessons, but permitted any
pupil who was dissatisfied to pay whatever sum he should
declare on oath in a temple, to be all that was due.

411 B. c.] PERSECUTION AT ATHENS. 15

Among other noted Sophists were Hippias and Gorgias,
both of whom won much fame, not only as teachers and
orators, but as ambassadors, and the latter of whom is said
to have been honored with a statue of gold erected at Delphi
by the contributions of all Greece. Most of these teachers,
were great travelers, but Prodicus, the friend of Socrates,
who borrowed from him the lofty allegory of The Choice
of Hercules, or as Lowell calls it, The Parting of the Ways,
spent most of his life in Athens, where he is said to have
narrowly escaped having to drink hemlock, for attempting
to explain the nature of the gods. That the Sophists
generally and habitually attacked religion and morality,,
as has been asserted, is utterly incompatible with the fact
that they depended on their popularity for a livelihood ;,
but that Protagoras and Prodicus did expose themselves
to martyrdom shows that these Sophists at least were not
merely mercenary. That Gorgias, Hippias, and Prota-
goras, were teachers of exalted morality, like Prodicus^
is plain from the language attributed to them by Plato,,
and this writer places his most reprehensible theory in the
mouth of Callicles, who considers the Sophists good for
nothing. Some of them seem certainly to have given alto-
gether too much time to merely verbal quibbles, but their
main offense in Plato's eyes appears to have been that they
made light of his philosophical views. Gorgias, for instance,
argued that if any thing not accredited by the senses is to be
believed in, every thing should be which may be conceived of
by the intellect. The conservative Athenians, like some of
the church-fathers, were in general opposed to the Sophists,,
for reasons which held good against Plato and Socrates also,
namely, that it seemed dangerous to teach young men to-
argue on all subjects, and defend any opinion or action for
which they might be attacked. Little as he who gave such
weapons might wish to have them used against religion and
the laws, he could not prevent it. That the Sophists were not
5 a class, free-thinkers, is stated by Plato, Republic,, p. 143,.
but they became necessarily though unintentionally the first
professional teachers of free thought. They may have sought

16 EARLY PHILOSOPHY. [411 B. c.

for popularity and pay rather than for truth ; but yet they
< l'n I a great work for the mental development of Greece, as
has been gratefully acknowledged by Grote, Hegel, Lewes,
Denis, and even Plato, who in the dialogue called The Sophist,
pp. 230-1, describes him as the minister of the art of intellec-
tual purification, the teacher who cross-examines and refutes
his pupils until he has freed them from self-conceit,
and forced them to think for themselves.

IV.

And what the Sophists did as part of their trade now
became the sacred mission, the life-work of a man who fol-
lowed it so successfully and disinterestedly and died for it so
bravely that Socrates still stands before us, the grandest fig-
ure in all the history of thought. His birth at Athens 469 B. c.,
made him the contemporary of j3£schylus, Sophocles, Eurip-
ides, Aristophanes, Phidias, Pericles, Cymon, Thucydides,
Cleon, Alcibiades, Critias, Thrasybulus, Xenophon, Plato,
Protagoras, Anaxagoras, and other great men who were lead-
ers in such intellectual activity as has never been witnessed
since. None of them had so much influence as he on mental
progress, despite his humble birth, lifelong poverty, uncon-
ventional habits, and ridiculous ugliness. He had gained what
he could from every book and teacher within his reach, but
all he learned only increased his mighty originality. In de-
veloping his powers he relied mainly on conversation, which
he gradually came to use as a regular means of giving instruc-
tion and mental stimulus. It is by no means certain that he
^ver followed his father's trade of sculptor. All accounts
represent him as spending his whole time in his friends' houses
or in the streets and other public places, arguing with every
body who would answer him, while he was supportecj by the
voluntary offerings of his pupils, prominent among whom
were Crito and Alcibiades. The latter's life and honor he
saved at the battle of Potidaea, a few years after which, 423,
he is represented by Aristophanes as well-known for his skill
in argument. His own safety in the retreat at Delium was

405 B. c.] SOCRATES.

due to his calm courage and presence of mind. On!
he hold office, in 405, when he was president of the assembly,
at which it was proposed to put to death without legal trial
six admirals who had won a great victory but had failed, in
consequence, as they pleaded, of a storm, to pick up the dead
and wounded. Against the fury of popular indignation Soc-
rates stood alone and steadfast, so that the fatal decree had
to be postponed until a more pliant official came into power.
So during the reign of terror in which fifteen hundred citizens
were murdered by the thirty tyrants, he blamed their cruelties
openly, went on teaching in spite of their prohibition, and
when they commanded him to bring Leon of Salamis to Athens
to be put to death, paid no attention to the order, a dis-
obedience which would probably have cost his life, if the
tyranny had not soon been overthrown.

He was as exemplary in private as in public life. Plato
called him the best and wisest and most just of all men whom
he had ever known, and Xenophon is never weary of praising
his patience, temperance, chastity, simplicity of life, honesty,
and especially his though tfulness for his friends. His freedom
from the worst form of self-indulgence then prevalent is at-
tested by the silence of Aristophanes as well as by the state-
ments of footh Plato, (Banquet, p. 219), and Xenophon,
(Memorabilia, L, 2, 29 and 30). The latter disciple represents
his master as always ready to give information and instruction
to whoever will take it. Thus Xenophon's Socrates urges
Aristodemus to believe in the gods, Aristippus to care less for
self-indulgence, Chserephon to make friends with his brother,
Aristarchus. to set his free-born poor relations to work for
their support, Crito to employ a friend for protection against
litigation, Pericles the younger to fortify the mountains be-
tween Attica and Bo3otia, Charmides to engage in politics,
Epigenes to take care of his health, and his own son Lamprocles
to have patience with Zanthippe, whose ill temper did not at-
tract the notice of either Plato or Aristophanes, and is not
without excuse in her husband's neglect to labor for his fam-
ily's support. It was in keeping with the moral standard of
the times for Socrates to tell Theodota how to gain and keep

18 EARLY PHILOSOPHY. [399 B. c.

the lovers on whom she lived, but far above it for him to
praise the husband who treats his wife as his equal, and the
master and mistress who are kind and just towards their
slaves.

Xenophon appears so sure of his master's conformity to the
established ideas of religion and morality that, if we had no
other source of information, we should find it difficult to un-
derstand either why Socrates was put to death or how he be-
came so famous. There is nothing heretical in the Memora-
bilia, except the theory that right and wrong are not made so
by "the will of the gods, but by innate tendency to increase or
diminish happiness. Socrates makes utility the test, not only
of goodness but even of beauty, according to Xenophon, who
was so anxious to make his master appear orthodox, and so
free from any desire to set forth a philosophical system of his
own that his testimony on this point must be accepted, espe-
cially as it is confirmed by Cicero, who declares that Socrates
was wont to curse those who separated the ideas of the useful
and the virtuous, which, by their nature, are in harmony.
Plato also places decidedly utilitarian language in the mouth
of the hero of the Protagoras, Crito, Republic, Charmides,
Theatetus, First Alcibiades, Greater Hippias, and Hipparchus.
The last three dialogues are of doubtful authenticity, but if
they are not Plato's, we have so many more witnesses to the
utilitarian tendency of the teachings of Socrates, who cannot
indeed be said to have founded a regular system of ethics, but
who certainly seems to have been one of the first to teach that
goodness consists in promoting not merely one's own happi-
ness, but the welfare of the community, and that general ex-
pediency is the true aim of legislation, propositions stated in
the Memorabilia, Crito, Theatetus, and Republic, but not in
the Protagoras, which is simply self -regard ing. Such were
the views of the first philosopher who made morality his main
study in place of the physical inquiries hitherto predominant.
Thus it was that Socrates brought philosophy down from the
skies to dwell among mankind.

To this purpose was due a habit which Xenophon incident-
ally mentions, and which Aristophanes and Plato make very

399 B. c.] SOCRATES. 19

prominent, namely the fondness of Socrates for cross-ques-
tioning people and making them contradict themselves. In
the Memorabilia this is said to be done only in order to open
a way for positive instruction, but in Plato's dialogues any
such aim is repeatedly disavowed and all such instruction is
frequently refused to those who ask for it. There is no doubt
of the authenticity of the Eutyphro, Charmides, Laches, Menoy
Lysis, Theatetus, TJieages, Ion, Euthydemus, Gorgias, and
Apology, all which represent Socrates as deliberately upset-
ting the received definitions of piety, temperance, courage,
friendship, and truth, without seeking to establish any new
ones, and as even professing again and again that he is unable
to teach any thing, and that all he knows is that he knows
nothing. The judges who condemned him to death had but
just been told by him, according to Plato, that he had nothing
positive to teach, that he was wiser than his neighbors only
because he knew his own ignorance as they did not, and that,
deeply as he was wont to offend people by convicting them of
error, he considered this such a sacred duty that he should
never give it up, however he might be threatened with pun-
ishment. As he made virtue depend on knowledge, it is par-
ticularly remarkable to find him holding that neither could be
taught. The same preference for negative over positive
teaching appears in several dialogues of rather uncertain au-
thorship, namely, the First and. Second Alcibiades, the Greater
and Lesser Hippias, Hipparchus, the Rivals, and Cleitophon.
In the last the pupil declares that he must leave his master,
because he can get nothing but exposures of error, which he
has long heard with great pleasure and profit, but which he
now wishes to supplement with some definite statement of
what is really true and good. The utilitarianism attributed
by Plato to Socrates seems most useful as a weapon of attack,
and where the master is made to propound any other positive
teachings, there is good reason, as we shall see, to suppose that
here we have mainly the views of the disciple. Thus Plato's
Socrates gave his life to overturning the established ideas of
truth and goodness, and forcing people to confess their igno-
rance.

20 EARL 7 PHILOSOPHY. [399 B. c.

Aristophanes gives a somewhat similar view of the work of
Socrates, but differs from Plato in making it include an attack
on the existence of the gods, and also systematic instruction
in the art of escaping moral duties and legal liabilities, which
skill was secretly imparted to any one who would pay for it.
Both Plato and Xenophon, however, agree in declaring that
Socrates had great respect for the national deities as well as
for the laws of the land, that he taught nothing in private,
that he asked no pay from his pupils, but often shrank from
accepting presents, and, finally, that his only aim was to make
people wiser and better.

In fact, Socrates spent his time and finally laid down his
life in carrying out a theory of the value of free inquiry so
advanced that but few rationalists really hold it even now.
He lived and died for a method of instruction which would
close our churches and revolutionize our schools. Men who
are trying to prove that skepticism is not very dangerous
morally, may well remember the confidence with which the
best and wisest of the Greeks declared that the state
of mind which most promotes morality is that of
constant search for truth. Nothing favors virtue so much as
vigor of thought, and this can come only by thinking for
ourselves. The good teacher is not he who tells us what is
true, but he who sets us to work to find it out. The true
friend of virtue is not he who confirms us in our inherited
ideas, but he who forces us to improve them. Such, at least,
was the opinion of Socrates. His real successors are Pyrrho,
Lucian, Abelard, Hume, Voltaire, Lessing, Buckle, Mill and
Renap.

Reverence for the laws of Athens seems to have kept
Socrates from applying his own methods of inquiry to
theology ; and this reserve, together with respect for his
character and fear of his power to make opponents ridiculous,
enabled him to teach for many years in safety ; but in 399 he
was tried for his life, on the charge of denying .the national
divinities, introducing new gods, and making the young men
immoral. He was able to assure his judges that he believed
in all his nation's deities, and especially in the divinity of the

399 B. c.] SOCRATES. 21

sun and moon. The views about these bodies held by Anax-
agoras he rejected indignantly. But the effect of this speech,
still preserved by Plato, must have been much impaired by
the fact that he had never been initiated at Eleusis ; that he
had been the friend of Euripides and Prodicus, and that
among his favorite pupils were Alcibiades, who had pro-
faned the Eleusinian mysteries, and Critias, who had said that
it was only the wish to rule others which had led men to pre-
tend that there were any gods. More serious was the charge
of introducing new divinities, for it was well known that he
claimed to be under special divine guidance. This indeed he
did not ascribe to any particular person, nor did he pretend to
have seen visions, or heard voices, or received any revelation
of duty or truth. He tells his judges that he was never thus
commanded to do any thing, but often restrained from action,
especially from taking part in politics. Among other results
of this secret oracle were his refusing to take unfit persons as
disciples, his choosing at Delium the path by which he
escaped from the enemy, and his avoiding a street in Athens
where he would have been run over by a herd of swine. It is
simply a mistake in gender to talk of the Demon of Socrates ;
what he really called it was something divine ; and, in fact, it
was simply such a presentiment of danger as no able thinker
would now consider supernatural.

The fatal point of the indictment was the charge of cor-
rupting the youth. Everjr judge knew that gross immo-
rality had been practiced by both Alcibiades and Critias, that
the former had not only committed sacrilege, but had joined
his country's enemies, secured the failure of the expedition to
Syracuse, caused Deceleia to be fortified, negotiated the
alliance of Sparta with Persia, and instigated the revolt of
the lonians. It was also well known that Critias had been
the leader of the thirty tyrants, who had but just been over-
thrown. Among their champions had fallen Charmides, the
uncle of Plato, and the only man whom Socrates is said to
have advised to take part in politics. Prominent among the
liberators of Athens was Anytus, one of the prosecutors, and
he complained that his son had been led by Socrates to

22 EARLY PHILOSOPHY. [399 B. c.

despise his father's business, that of a tanner, and thus left
open to the temptations which finally carried the young man
into a drunkard's grave. Another disciple, Xenophon, was
then absent without leave as a soldier of fortune in Persia,
and was afterwards banished for fighting against his native
city. Socrates had also, owing possibly to the fact that his
own friends were mostly in the upper class, while the great
body of the people were still swayed by that superstitious
bigotry which had recently persecuted Alcibiades and Anaxa-
goras, frequently spoken with contempt of the system of
popular government which had but just been restored.

What really insured his condemnation seems, however, to
have been his refusing to ask any favors of his judges, and
addressing to them that grand vindication of himself which
should not be called an apology. He appeals to the Delphic
Oracle, which had pronounced him the wisest of all men, as a
proof that the gods had commanded him to cross-examine all
pretenders to wisdom, and stir up every one to activity as a
gad-fly does a horse. This philosophic mission of searching
into himself and other men is thus a-divine charge, which he
will not desert, even to save his life. He warns his judges
that it would be useless for them to offer to forgive him and
spare him as long as he should cease to cross-question and
puzzle people. His words, as recorded by Plato and trans-
lated by Professor Jowett, are these : " Men of Athens, I
honor and love you ; but I shall obey God rather than you,
and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from
the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting any one
whom I meet after my manner and convincing him." " For
this is the command of God, as I would have you know ; and
I believe that to this day no greater good has ever come to
the state than my service to the God. Wherefore, O men of
Athens, either acquit me or not ; but whatever you do, know
that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die
many times."

That such a speech was followed by his conviction is not
surprising. Indeed it is a strong proof of the liberality and
intelligence of the Athenians, that out of five or six hundred

399 B. c.] SOCRATES. 23

judges the majority against him was at first but six, accord-
ing to some manuscripts of Plato. He could probably
lave saved his life even then, if he had chosen to take advan-
tage of a law providing that any culprit found guilty of a
capital crime might propose some minor penalty, which he
was willing to suffer instead of death, and let the judges take
their choice. Socrates, however, told the meji who had just
voted him guilty, that what he really deserved was to be sup-
ported for life by the state, as a public benefactor. He did
offer to pay a fine of about fifteen dollars, a sum which he
finally increased, at the entreaty of Crito and Plato, to five
hundred. It was too late for this, however. Such was the
indignation of the judges that they refused to hear Plato
speak, and eighty of those who had voted for acquittal, now
took part in sentencing Socrates to drink hemlock.

He would have been executed at once, but the sacred ship
was about to carry the yearly offering of Athens to Delos,
and so he was suffered to live thirty days longer, until its
return. His legs were fettered, but he was allowed to write
poetry and talk freely with his family and friends. Crito
bribed the jailer and urged Socrates to escape, but he refused
to violate the laws, which seemed to stand before him, re-
minding him how much they had done for him, and how often
he had shown his regard for them, and warning him that
flight from prison would make him the enemy of iustice, and
prevent his finding welcome among the virtuous, so that he
had better be a sufferer than a doer of evil. Such at least is
the account given by Plato, who also tells us how nis master
met bis friends for the last time, and argued with them in
favor of immortality, taking care to say : " I wish you to
think of the truth and not of Socrates ^ agree with me if I
seem to speak the truth, but if not, withstand me might and
main, that I may not deceive you in my enthusiasm, and, like
the bee, leave my sting in you as I die." He closes by re-
minding them that all he really wishes them to do is to look
to themselves, and walk according to his precepts.

As sunset drew near he bathed himself, in order to save his
wife the trouble of washing a dead body, and then bade his

24 EARL T PHILOSOPHY. [399 B. c.

family farewell. Now the jailer came to say : " Socrates,,
you have shown yourself the noblest and gentlest and best of
all who ever came to this place, and I am sure you will not be
angry with me. Fare you well, and try to bear lightly what
must needs be. You know my errand." Bursting into tears
he went out to prepare the poison. Crito urged his friend to
delay drinking it until the sun had fully set, but Socrates was
ready to go. When the cup was brought, he asked if there
were enough for a libation to the gods. There was not, so he
prayed them to prosper his journey to the world below, and
drank off the poison cheerfully. His friends burst into tears,
but he alone remained calm, and begged them to suffer him
to die in peace. After walking to and fro, as was directed,
he lay down, and the chill of death mounted up from his feet
towards his heart. His last words were to beg Crito to pay"
the cock due to ^Esculapius in gratitude for a happy death.

v.

Fortunate are we in having so much of his free and enno-
bling spirit preserved in those matchless dialogues, full of such
lofty imagery, keen satire, touching pathos, life-like sketches,
and spirited conversation that Plato may be justly called the
Shakespeare of philosophers. Peculiar to the great Athenian,
however, is the galaxy of precepts like these :

" Neither retaliation nor the warding off of evil by evil is.
ever right." " May I, being of sound mind, do unto others
as I would that they should do unto me." " Truth is the
beginning of every good, both to the gods and abb to men."'
" Justice is the excellence of the soul." " The right treatment
of slaves is to do them, if possible, even more justice than
those who are our equals.'- " In his relations to strangers, a
man should consider tliat a contract is a most holy thing, and
that all the concerns and wrongs of strangers are more direct-
ly dependent on the protection of God than the wrongc done
to citizens." " You are created for the sake of the whoic, and
not the whole for the sake of you." " The temperate man is-
the friend of God, for he is like Him." " Without the sense-

387 B. c.] PLATO. 25

of honor and dishonor, neither states nor individuals- ever do
any good or great work." " The greatest penalty of evil-do-
ing is to grow into the likeness of bad men." " Knowledge
is the food of the soul." " To do wrong is only second in the
scale of evils ; but to do wrong and not be punished is first
and greatest of all." " No pleasure except that of the wise is
quite true and pure ; all others are a shadow only." " Faint
heart never raised a trophy." " Beloved Pan and all ye other
gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in my soul and
may the outward and inward man be at one ! "

Plato's chief service to mental liberty was by preserving
and illustrating the lofty theory of Socrates, that truth is not
to be reached either through blind reliance on other men's
opinions, or through jumping at conclusions, but through a
daring and careful re-examination which leaves no objection
unanswered, but rejects no legitimate deduction as too dan-
gerous, and that the knowledge so gained is the firmest of
moral safeguards. Modern Platonists have given much less
attention to this theory than to another, more plainly favor-
able to independence than to correctness of thought, which
was probably developed under Pythagorean influence after
the death of Socrates, and which teaches that the highest ob-
jects of knowledge are abstract ideas to be reached by intui-
tion, without the aid of the senses.

Such ideas of Justice, Beauty and Truth, the Phcedrus
pictures the gods as beholding constantly, while the disem-
bodied soul gains more or less lasting vision according to her
power to control the lower passions harnessed to her chariot,,
and thus becomes prepared to re-enter life in a form corre-
sponding to the fullness of her contemplations. This knowl-
edge of abstract ideas in a pre-existent state is ap-
pealed to in the Phcedo, as an argument for immor-
tality. In the seventh book of the Republic, the
philosopher is said to have risen to truth so far trans-
cending that possessed by other men, that they are like
prisoners in a cave where nothing can be seen but shadows.
The Timceus and Cratylus teach the existence of ideal proto-
types corresponding to all general names ; for instance, anr

-26 EAEL Y PHILOSOPHY. [387 B. c.

eternal man who is the pattern by which all other men have
been created. Plato had so much more than some of his own
followers of the spirit of Socrates, and was so anxious to have
his theory rest on that firmest of foundations which is made
up of vanquished objections, that he actually devoted two of
his ablest dialogues, the /Sophist and Parmenides, to urging the
strongest reasons for believing that those ideas he reverenced
so much were merely the creations of his own thoughts. Plato
has not left any answer to many of his arguments against his
own theory, as we may justly call it, since we know, from the
testimony of Aristotle, that it was not held by Socrates.
Idealism in this form has since made few converts, but it has
done much to lead people to rely for knowledge on their
intuitions rather than on observation and experience.

Plato's vigor of imagination led him to suggest some new
truths of great value, like the rotundity of our earth, but it
often tempted him to prefer his own fancies to the facts dis-
covered by others, as he did when he assigned ten thousand
years as the period during which all the heavenly bodies
come round again to their former position. Thus he utterly
ignored the great work which Meton had done, and which his
own disciple, Eudoxus, was doing, in calculating the real cycle
of changes through which the sun and moon pass. Equally
characteristic was his thinking, that our drink passes through
the wind -pipe into the lungs, that fire is composed of pyra-
mids and earth of cubes, that the first animals created were
men, the vicious among whom degenerated into women and
then to fishes, while those who sought knowledge mainly
through the senses turned to birds, and those who cared noth-
ing for even such philosophy sank into quadrupeds and rep-
tiles— fancies not without influence on modern thought.
Plato's own indifference to scientific methods, as well as to
practical discoveries, seems to have done much to prevent later
philosophers from imitating Thales, Empedocles, and Anaxa-
goras.

As a moralist, he sometimes tries to measure right and
wrong by degree of conformity to the ideal standard, as is at-
tempted in the Timceus, Philebus, Grorgias, Theatetus, and

387 B. c.] PLATO. 27

Republic. In other parts of the last two dialogues, as well as
in the Crito and Protagoras, and especially in his latest and
most practical composition, the Laws, he has to make use, as a
convenient instrument for demonstration, of the utilitarianism
which he learned from Socrates.

The theory of politics, which occupies the two longest dia-
logues, though sustained by appeals to utilitarianism, is not
however derived either from this system or from idealism, but
from the usages of Sparta and Crete. From these countries
lie borrowed the disfranchisement of the working classes, the
turning of all the citizens into a standing army living in bar-
racks, inhospitality toward foreigners and restriction of
travel, the gymnastic training of girls and boys together, the
practice of infanticide, bringing up of the survivors by the
state, neglect of the sick, exclusion of commerce, and prohi-
bition of gold and silver, measures most strongly urged in the
Republic, which work is also marked by the attempt to abolish
private property and marriage among the soldiers and rulers,
both which classes were to consist of women as well ae men,
the supreme power being held by a highly educated, heredit-
ary aristocracy. In the Laws, the magistrates are elected, and
are obliged to make all the children follow the same studies
for the same length of time, and to punish with imprisonment
or death all who believe, either that the gods do not exist and
take care of mortals, or that they may be moved by prayers
and sacrifices. That he was one of the first to denounce this
prevalent superstition, as well as to proclaim the right of wo-
men to be as highly educated as men and to take an equal
part in the government, is certainly to be remembered grate-
fully, but we must regret his intolerance and still more his
advice, in both Laws and Republic, to the rulers to keep
themselves in power by deliberately deceiving their subjects.
A third dialogue, the Statesman, recommends the rule of a
philosophic monarch unrestricted by laws. Thus Plato's writ-
ings are a curious result of Spartan, Pythagorean and Socratic
influences over a brilliant but eccentric intellect.

He was but twenty-eight at the death of Socrates, after
which he traveled to Egypt, Italy, and finally Sicily, where

28 EARL Y PHILOSOPHY. [387 B . a

his reproof of the despotism of Dionysius the Elder caused
him to be sold as a slave. He was soon liberated, and re-
turned to Athens, where he collected a costly library and
founded a school, called the Academy, from the name of the
grove, consecrated to a mythical hero, where it was situated.
Among his many disciples was Aristotle. When Syracuse
passed into the hands of the younger Dionysius, Plato was in-
vited to help him and his uncle reform the government. The-
customary prayer for the continuance of the tyranny was
abolished by Dionysius, who asked his guests what were the
first steps to take in order to set Sicily free. Plato, however,,
according to a letter written by one of his disciples, if not by
himself, replied that it was too early to think of that, and
what the young king had, first of all, to do was to free himself
from ignorance, and then he would know how to liberate
others. Dionysius, who fancied himself already a philosopher,
was much offended by this rebuke, and ere long gave up his,
plans of reform, banished Dion, and placed Plato in honorable
captivity. The philosopher was soon released and afterward
made a third visit to Sicily, where he tried in vain to reconcile
Dionysius with Dion. The latter had the sympathy of the
Academy in overthrowing the tyranny, but perished in trying
to become such a philosophic despot as is described in the*
Statesman. No wonder that Plato's last years were gloomy.
His successors at the head of this school, Speusippus and
Xenocrates, did not fully accept his doctrine of ideas, and
skepticism ultimately triumphed even in the Academy. Thus
he seems to have succeeded much better in pulling down than.
in building up.

VI.

Plato disliked the Sophists, but their influence did much to
enable other disciples of Socrates to found three schools, which
preserved respectively so much of his disputatiousness, his-
utilitarianism, and his unconventionality, as to become the
forerunners of the Skeptics, Epicureans, and Stoics. After the
death of the master, all the disciples were sheltered for a while

•387 B. c.] OTHER DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 29

by Euclid of Megara, who, during the war, had often gone
to Athens by night and in a woman's dress, in order to argue
with the great dialectician, from whom he learned the reductio
ad absurdum, which he employed with peculiar success in de-
fending the theory of Parrnenides that the Absolute is indivis-
ible against Plato's separation of it into different ideas.
Among his followers was Eubulides, who did much to force
people to think and speak accurately, by insisting on puzzles
like this : " You say you lie. Now if you speak the truth, you
-are a liar. But if you lie, then you tell the truth." Still later
in this Megaric school came Stilpo, who taught Zeno the Stoic
that pain is no evil and that wisdom is sufficient for happiness,
and who was banished from Athens by the Areopagus, for
saying that the great statue of Minerva was the child of Phi-
dias, not of Jupiter, and therefore no god. Similar fondness
for argument marked the Eretrian and Eliac philosophers, the
latter of. whom followed Phsedo, the narrator, according to
Plato, of the death of Socrates, and who are not to be con-
founded with the Elean school established during the previous
century by Xenophanes, in Italy.

Little heed was taken of logical subtleties by Aristippus
of Gyrene, who traveled about, teaching his pupils to enjoy
themselves, and receiving great sums of money, which he spent
with Lais and her frail sisters. He valued pleasure even more
highly than Socrates did, but differed from his master mainly
in prizing sensual and momentary delights. " The present
alone is ours," said the Cyrenaic, who, however, took some
pains to keep himself and his pupils from being enslaved by
sensuality. Both pleasure and pain were positive realities to
him, and the only tests of right and wrong ; which words
when used otherwise he thought had merely a conventional
meaning, a view already presented by Archelaus, a disciple of
Anaxagoras. Aristippus is further noted for rejecting the
Platonic ideas, and holding that all knowledge is relative, as
well as for many sayings like his answer to the question, what
advantage the philosopher had over other men : " If all laws
were repealed we should still live as we do now." So when
Dionysius, at whose court he spent much time, bade him take

30 EAELT PHILOSOPHY. [387 B. c.

the lowest seat at table, he remarked ; " Doubtless you wish
to make this place honorable." His most faithful pupil was
his daughter Arete, who made a philosopher of her own son,
named after his father, but nicknamed " Mother-taught."
Other disciples were Anniceris, who thought more than his
master did of friendship and patriotism, and who ransomed
Plato from slavery ; Hegesias, who is called " The Orator of
Death," because he spoke of life with such dissatisfaction as
to tempt his hearers to suicide ; and Theodore the Atheist, who
wrote a book about the gods which, as Diogenes Laertius says,
is not to be despised, who carried the scorn of conventional
morality even further than Aristippus, and who narrowly es-
caped being forced to drink hemlock by the Areopagus. His
pupil Evemerus wrote a Sacred History, in which he asserted,
on the basis of inscriptions he professed to have found in his
travels, that Saturn, Jupiter, etc., were only deified chieftains,
an opinion which kept gaining popularity afterward.

Similar hostility to idealism and very different views of
pleasure were held by Antisthenes, the first philosopher who
devoted himself to the moral training of the poor. He held
that virtue alone is sufficient for happiness, and that pleasure
is morally dangerous, so that he was wont to say, he had rather
be mad than glad. He imitated his master's plainness of dress
and speech, which habit as well as the name of the place where
he lectured, caused him and his disciples to be called Cynics.
These currish philosophers went about in no garments but
their mantles, bareheaded and barefoot, carying great sticks
and wallets, living by beggary, freely reviling whatever they
thought immoral or artificial, and openly rejecting all refine-
ments, and even decencies. The founder, Antisthenes, taught
that the moral law is the same for both sexes, that virtue is
the only acceptable worship, and that no knowledge of God
can come from graven images. Among his sayings are : " Men
have many gods, Nature but one." " If I could catch Venus,
I would shoot her ; for she has led many good and beautiful
women astray." Once he interrupted a priest who praised
the other world and blamed this, with : " Why don't you die ? "
When he heard bad people praise him, he asked : " What ill

370 B. c.] OTHER DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES. 31

deed have I done ? " To those who inquired what he had
learned from philosophy, he answered : " To be company for
myself." Before he knew Socrates, he was a Sophist, or pro-
fessional teacher of rhetoric, and no man could be more per-
suasive, but in his old age he was wont to threaten to strike
those who offered themselves as pupils. Once he tried thus
to drive away a young Paphlagonian, who said, " Hit as hard
as you please, but I shall never leave you until you cease to
speak."

This was Diogenes, who when he was subsequently cap-
tured by pirates and sold as a slave, declared that he should
never be one, for Antisthenes had made him free. He waa
offered for sale in Crete, arid answered to those who asked
what he could do, " Govern men." A rich Corinthian bought
him as tutor for his children, whom he brought up so success-
fully that he was then permitted to live as he pleased. He
seems to have spent most of his time at Corinth, where he
lived for a while in a tub, and where he answered to Alexan-
der's question, " What can I do for you ? " " Stand out of
my sunshine." It was to light a fire for his master that he
once crossed the market-place with a lantern, and thus pro-
voked questions which he parried by saying, that he was look-
ing for an honest man. To a profligate fellow who wrote
up over his door, "May no evil enter here," he said,
" Where are you going to live yourself ? " When he saw
a temple hung with the votive gifts of those who had been
saved, he exclaimed : " How much more space would be
needed for the offerings of the worshipers who perished ! n
So he was wont to mock those who sacrificed to the gods for
health, and then made themselves sick in feasting on such por-
tions of the flesh as were not burned upon the altars. Such was
his coarseness of speech and action that he was nicknamed,
" The Crazy Socrates."

His most noted disciple was Crates, called, "The Door
Opener," on account of his habit of calling, without knocking,
on any one who needed counsel or rebuke. He gave up his
large property to follow Diogenes, but afterwards, despite his
poverty, rudeness of behavior, and ugliness, won the heart

32 EARL T PHILOSOPHY. [335 B. c.

of the high-born, young, and wealthy Hipparchia, whose
brother he had saved from suicide. Crates advised her not to
marry him, but she insisted on doing so, adopted his way of
life, and went about in male attire.

This sect was the only one mentioned in this section, that
survived the century. Indeed, it lasted until it was supplanted
by the Christian monks. Epictetus declares that the true
Oynic is the father of mankind, looks on all men as his sons,
and all women as daughters, keeps himself pure from sin, and
free from desire of self-indulgence, bears the worst treatment
patiently, and labors continually for every body's good. It is
Christian injustice to Paganism that has caused cynical to
mean misanthropic.

VII.

Meantime a more important system than any we have men-
tioned, except Plato's, was founded by one of the latter's dis-
ciples, who, though greatly his inferior in literary skill, was
fully his equal in ability, and immensely his superior in knowl-
edge; so that Aristotle's influence on philosophy, has been
greater than any other Greek, as is shown by his having given
us many words like energy, category, and metaphysics. For
twenty years he was a pupil of Plato, and much of his subse-
quent life was spent in criticising his master's views, espe-
cially the theories that knowledge is reminiscence, and that uni-
versal terms, like the general idea of man, exist eternally and
independently, so as to furnish the patterns after which indi-
viduals are created. Aristotle taught that these universals
exist only in the individuals, and are simply common properties
in which members of the same race or class agree to form it.
Knowledge he ascribed primarily to individual experience and
to sensations felt during the present life. Again and again
he says : " It is in facts that we must seek general principles,
and these must always accord with the facts." " More reliance
must be placed on facts than on reasoning, for this should
agree with facts." His works on natural history describe
many curious habits of animals, like the cuckoo's making other

.335 B. c.] ARISTOTLE. 33

birds rear her young, the cuttle-fish's escaping in a cloud of
its own ink, and the building of nests by fishes ; and Aris-
totle is especially memorable for discovering a great law of
development, much contested even by modern naturalists, but
now generally admitted, namely, that of epigenesis, according
to which the parts of the embryo do not pre-exist in the germ,
but originate by successive differentiations. Many of his state-
ments, however, must have proceeded from hasty observation
or mere conjecture, and his lack of skill in classification is
marked. He professed to follow the inductive method, to
proceed from particular facts to general principles, but his de-
sire to solve all possible problems often made him jump at
conclusions, and his belief that the divine purpose is every-
where to be discerned, sometimes led him to assert the real
occurrence of what he thought such a purpose would effect.
Thus he has been regarded as an opponent of the very method
which he did more than any one else to found.

More generally acknowledged is his claim to be honored as
the father of logic. And this science he carried so far that
both Kant and Hegel acknowledged that no further progress
had been made up to their own day. Thus he did so much,
not only to point out the real source of knowledge, but to
teach the art of reasoning, that he may be said to have been
the first to give proper weapons to free thought. Politically
he favored monarchy, but he insisted on the right of the citi-
zen to the protection of just laws. Slavery of barbarians to
Greeks seemed to him necessary and right ; but he thought
that slaves should receive instruction in virtue and be eman-
cipated if they behaved properly, and his own servants gained
their liberty as his bequest. So, while admitting that wives
should be in subjection, he insisted that they should not be
treated as slaves. His influence on his own age must have been
that of a practical but very moderate reformer. His ethical
system recognized the fact that all men seek for happiness,
but defined this object as virtuous activity. Thus Aristotle
made happiness a form of virtue, whereas utilitarians make
virtue a form of happiness ; and he further differed from
them in defining right as placed between two wrong ex-

34 EARLY PHILOSOPHY. [335 B. c.

tremes where it may best promote the individual's highest
good. The claims of the universal welfare are acknowl-
edged in his description of justice, but not so fully as is
required by utilitarianism. The great value of his treatise
on morals is in its practical precepts and distinctions, which
make it still one of the most useful and interesting of books.
His theology was free from anthropomorphism, gave no
room for special providences or prophetic dreams, and allowed
little activity or personality to the nation's gods. Immor-
tality, as we understand it, he rejected, though he ascribed
power of existing eternally and impersonally to the highest
part of the soul. These views, together with his having
honored the memory of his wife and his benefactor in a way
alleged to be impious, caused him, after the death of his pupil
and patron, Alexander the Great, to be prosecuted by the
high priest of Ceres, and exposed to such danger of perishing
like Socrates, that he fled from Athens, declaring that he
did not wish to have this city make a second error in phi-
losophy.

Aristotle has had fewer readers than Plato, but more stu-
dents ; and his opinions have had far greater authority over
all whom they have reached. Plato's attempts to solve the
great problems of thought have stimulated fresh endeavor,
but Aristotle's solutions were accepted as finalities for many
centuries, and their authority has not yet wholly passed away.
One philosopher did more to force men to think independently,
and the other to teach them to reason correctly. Plato is a
good example of the brilliant originality to be gained by dis-
regarding all authority, even that of actual facts ; but Aristotle
shows us that truth can not be reached unless we take heed, not
only of all circumstances and phenomena, but of the results
attained by other thinkers. No one has paid more close at-
tention than he to the opinions of other authors, and to the
institutions established around him ; and hence no one has
been able to add more to the world's stock of knowledge.
This treasure, however, he would have been able to increase
much more considerably if he had not wasted part of his
strength on problems which either cannot be solved, or are

307 B. c,] CONCL USION. 35

not worthy of elaborate solutions. Much unprofitable work
was done, not only by him, but by his followers. His school
was called, from his habit of walking to and fro while lectur-
ing, the Peripatetic, and is also known as the Lyceum, a name
given from its location in the shady promenades near a temple
of the Lycian Apollo. Among the early members were Strato,
surnamed " The Naturalist," because he was the first to assert
that there is no God but nature, and no divinity but that of sun,
moon, stars and earth ; Dicsearchus, who opposed not only
the theory that the soul is immaterial and immortal, but the
practice of relying on dreams and oracles ; and Theophrast,
who ridicules superstition in his book on traits of character,
and is also noted for opposing the sacrifice of animals to the
gods. He was lecturing to 2,000 hearers, in 307, when all the
philosophers left Athens because her citizens took advantage
of the partial revival of democratic government to pass
a decree, provoked by the favor shown both by the Peripa-
tetics and the Platonists to oligarchy and foreign rule, pro-
hibiting the teaching of philosophy without permission of the
state, and threatening death for disobedience. The exiles were
invited to return the next year, however, by the repeal of the
edict, and freedom of speech was not again restricted while
Athens was under pagan rule.

vin.

Thus, after glancing at Judaism and Buddhism, we have
seen how innovators from Ionia taught with little opposi-
tion, until Anaxagoras and Alcibiades were driven from
Athens ; how this persecution brought ruin on the State ; how
Socrates died a martyr for liberty of speech ; how Plato kept
alive his master's spirit while teaching a new system ; how the
Megarians, Cynics, and Cyrenaics went still further in imita-
ting the great Athenian ; how Aristotle placed philosophy on a
firmer foundation than before ; and how he and his disciples
were banished for political rather than religious heresies. The
next chapter will show how philosophy changed from a victim
to the victor of paganism.

CHAPTER II.

THE CONQUEST OF PAGANISM DURING THE LAST THEEE CEN-
TURIES B.C.

The incorporation of the Greek cities into the Macedonian
empire caused great loss of power to their priests, whose po-
sition was now little better than that of state functionaries.
And as Alexander and his successors brought Athens into close
political and commercial relations with Egypt, Palestine,
Persia, India, and Scy thia, thinking men were enabled to com-
pare different forms of worship, and perceive that no one was
intrinsically superior to the rest. At the same time the mu-
nificent patronage of the Ptolemies gave great currency to
scientific methods of thought, and thus room was made for
new systems of philosophy to save educated people from fear
that errors in belief might call down the wrath of the gods,
as well as from subjection to the authority of prophets, priests,
and oracles. Now arose kingdoms whose subjects differed so
widely in religion, that errors in opinion could no longer be
punished by law. A peculiarly tolerant policy was necessa-
rily adopted towards the provinces conquered by the Roman
republic, whose citizens learned to respect the religions, not
only of the Jews, Parsees, and worshipers of Isis and Cybele,
but of the believers in Druidism and the Norse mythology,
as equal in sanctity to the rites established in Italy, while the
increased knowledge thus gained of the dangerous tendencies
of superstition caused the irreligious forms of philosophy to
grow rapidly in favor.

The most original of these new systems was founded by Aris-
totle's contemporary, Pyrrho, who had followed Alexander
through Persia to India, and thus found how much men vary

300 B. c.] PYRRHO AND THE NEW ACADEMY. 37

in opinions, customs, and laws. This experience, with knowl-
edge of the differences between philosophers, and of the illu-
sions of the senses, led him to maintain that no one has ever
reached absolute truth, or found out any thing about the In-
finite, and that true wisdom consists in not taking sides with
any religion or philosophy, but looking at all theological and
metaphysical disputes as a disinterested and curious spectator.
This position, which Pyrrho found peculiarly agreeable, is ex-
pressed in Greek by a word from which he and his followers
are called Skeptics. In conduct they were in the habit of
following the usages prevalent around them, but their main
efforts were directed toward holding their judgments in sus-
pense, welcoming any ideas that seemed useful, and carefully
avoiding such zeal for any opinion as seemed hostile to peace of
thought. Of nothing were they more convinced than that skep-
ticism is more favorable than dogmatism to mental tranquillity.
Pyrrho himself lived such a pure and peaceful life as nearly to
reach the age of ninety, to gain the office of high priest at
Elis, his native city, and to be almost the only classic philoso-
pher of any note about whom no scandal has come down to
us. It is hard to say whether it is to him or to a follower,
contemporary with Cicero, ^Enesidemus, that we owe the
famous ten arguments, given fully by Sextus Empiricus and
briefly by Diogenes Laertius. These are designed to show
that we have no right to be confident in any opinion, because,
first, the senses often deceive us ; second, men differ in their
natural needs and tastes ; third, our senses often differ
from each other in the impressions they give us of the
same object ; fourth, the same man varies in opinion accord-
ing as he is well or sick, sane or insane, drunk or sober, hungry,
frightened, in joy, or iii sorrow ; fifth, different nations differ
utterly in morals and theology ; sixth, we do not know sub-
stances in themselves but only by their properties ; seventh,
objects appear differently on account of their position ; eighth,
many things affect us very differently in small and in large
quantities ; ninth, what is rare is more valued and noticed
than wrhat is common ; and tenth, nothing can be known by
itself, but only in its relations to something else.

38 THE CONQ UEST OF PAGANISM. [300 B. c.

Such arguments forced even the Platonists to admit that
truth is utterly beyond our reach, and that the Infinite or
Absolute is incomprehensible ; so that it is useless to inquire
after any thing more than mere probability, and even this is
unattainable in regard to God or immortality. Thus the rejec-
tion of the authority of observation and experience by Plato
naturally led his followers into an extreme type of skepticism
now obsolete. Such was the logical process which produced
the Middle Academy, the credit of founding which is con-
tested between Arcesilaus and a later Platonist, Carneades,
who came to Rome as an ambassador, B.C. 156, and publicly
argued, first in favor of the necessity of justice and then
against its possibility, with such skill that Cato the Censor
persuaded the senate to banish ail philosophers. The new
views could not be expelled permanently, but soon made
many converts, among whom, in the last century B. c., were
Messala; Gotta, who plainly denies the existence of the gods
in Cicero's De JVatura Deorum ; Lutatius, the first Roman
who wrote history in the secular tone already taken by
Thucydides and Polybius ; and Varro, who argued in favor of
public worship, merely on the ground of its utility to the
state. But the most famous of these skeptical Platonists are
Brutus and Cicero. A full exhibition of the state of thought
just before the appearance of Christianity is given in the fa-
mous dialogues in which the great orator and his friends talk
about God, immortality, providence, and divination, as ques-
tions where there is much to say on each side, and no certainty
to be ever reached.

n.

Both the great patriots just mentioned owed much to
those more conservative philosophers, the Stoics, so called
after the frescoed porch in which were held the lectures
of their founder. Zeno was born in Citium, a Greek colony
in Phoenicia, and studied in Athens under Platonist, Peripate-
tic, and Cynic teachers, by whose aid and that of the writings
of Heraclitus he was able to bring forward his own system

300 B. c.J THE STOICS.

about 300 B.C. His fundamental doctrine is that whatever
exists, even the human mind and that all-pervading, all-
animating Soul of the World which holds the highest place in'
the Stoic faith, has material substance. Our senses are trust-
worthy, and it is by using them and reasoning logically about
what they give us that all knowledge comes. Ideas are
merely our own thoughts. Thus the human mind is like a
sheet of paper on which the senses write. The same compari-
son has since been made by Locke, but seems to have origi-
nated with Aristotle, who gave less authority and authorship to
the senses than did the Stoics. These latter have suffered
under Cicero's charge, that they stole all Aristotle's teachings
and merely altered the terms, as thieves do the ear-marks of
stolen cattle. The best defense "that can be made for the
Stoics is that they went much further in materialism
than did the Stagirite. Some of them seem even to have
been forced to admit that the virtues, being realities, must be
animals.

Their materialism did not hinder their teaching and prac-
ticing the loftiest morality, as is manifest in the writings of
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, as well as in such
lives as that of their great founder, whose integrity caused the
keys of Athens to be placed in his charge when the city was
in civil war ; that of King Cleomenes,the worthiest successor of
Leonidas, the champion of the poor, oppressed Spartans, and
the last defender of Grecian liberty against Macedon ; that of
Tiberius Gracchus, who fell a martyr to his attempt to give
the plebeians their share of the public lands ; that of Cato,
whose name is still the watch word of liberty and justice ; and
that of his heroic daughter who sat in council with the other
would-be liberators. How bravely later pupils of this school
opposed Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, and Vespasian,
will be related in the next chapter, as well as how grandly and
beneficially the five Stoic emperors reigned.

This moral teaching, though not systematically and formally
utilitarian, was brought into practical agreement with that of
J. S. Mill by the assumption that the law of nature which the
Stoics accepted as the supreme rule of virtue, commands us to

40 THE CONQ VEST OF PAGANISM. [300 B. c.

seek the universal welfare and promote the happiness of all
men.

(See Plutarch's Morals^ Goodwin's Edition, vol. 11, pp. 399
and 443, and the Reign of the Stoics, pp. 195 and 211.

All their teaching was inspired by faith in the perfect
goodness of God and the universal brotherhood of man, of
which latter doctrine Zeno was the earliest teacher west of In-
dia. Their proverbially strict morality forced them to reject
many of the fables current about the gods ; but they zeal-
ously urged that these deities kept constant watch over the
welfare of mortals, and gave frequent intimations of their will
through dreams, oracles, etc. Panaetius stood almost alone in
denying that auguries could be drawn from the flights of
birds, or the entrails of victims offered in sacrifice. It was his
pupil Sulpicius,who, while Supreme Pontiff, declared that there
are three kinds of religion — that of the priests, which gives the
gods human form, feelings, etc., and is false; that of the phil-
osophers, which disputes about every thing so as to be unsatis-
factory; and that of the politicians, which asserts whatever
the people need to believe for their own good, but only that.

The best part of the Stoic theology is their denial that the
gods are ever angry with any one, or do any harm, or that
they ought to be feared by man. The Hymn of Cleanthesy
written two hundred and fifty years before the birth of Jesus,
tells how Jove will end all discords, and bring all things to
unity, the good with the evil. This lofty poem, like all the
utterances of Stoicism, is full of trust in the Order of Nature,
and confidence that every thing is done according to
The current superstitions about punishments after death]
Stoics rejected unanimously, though admitting the
tality of the soul, except, however, that she would ultimSteljr
share the universal dissolution in which this world seemed des-
tined to pass away. Destiny played as prominent a part in their
creed as in those of other Greeks and Romans, but a much
more wise and philanthropic one. They held that no man
could escape his fate, and that any attempt to modify it was
sinful and ruinous, while to accept it cheerfully and bravely
would insure holiness and happiness. Special providences and

300 B. c.J EPICURUS. 41

miracles they were consistent enough to reject, as they did
the fables of future torments. Thus they sought to purify the
national religion, so that all the good in it might be preserved.

in.

The time was now come for more radical treatment of the
popular beliefs, especially that in Fate,whose darkness is shown
by the legend of CEdipus. He is born doomed to slay his
father and marry his mother. They and he do all they can to
prevent such sin ; but these efforts only lead him blindly on to
his own ruin and that of all his race. Thus destiny works
itself out with no regard for human virtue or happiness, no
heed to prayers or sacrifices, and no possibility of resistance
even by the gods. These deities have power enough, however,
to punish those who neglect them. King Agamemnon has
to slay his own daughter that he may appease Diana's wrath,
and Phaedra and Hippolytus perish because chastity displeases
Venus. Favor with one god is sure to bring down the wrath
of some other one, as it did on Hercules, ^Eneas, and Ulysses.
Unusual prosperity calls forth general hatred, such as de-
stroyed Poly crates. Even the greatest and best of the gods is
represented by ^Eschylus as so hostile to human happiness,
that our race is saved from ruin only by the might of Fate and
the self-devotion of Prometheus. Hundreds of foul legends
show that the hate of the gods was thought less cruel than
their accursed love. And the religion of the Greeks, like
those of all ancient nations, was darkened by fear, not only of
these jealous, cruel, and capricious lords, but also of numberless
mischievous and malignant ghosts, who were provoked by the
neglect of their relatives to cause all sorts of calamities ; for
instance, tempests and diseases, especially insanity and epilepsy.
The word demon, though not so dark in meaning as it became
later under Hebrew and Persian influence, often assumed some-
what of its present terror. Thus the faith of the Greeks and
Romans was made hostile to happiness by fear at once of the
fates, the gods, and the demons. The efforts a man might
make to shake off belief in any one of these powers were likely

42 THE CONQ VEST OF PAGANISM. [300 B. c.

to increase his dread of the others. Suppose that the gods
were only deified mortals, then they were to be feared like
other demons. Suppose that gods and demons were ruled by
Fate, then all the more absolute must be the tyranny of this
pitiless despot. Suppose the gods to rule even Destiny, then
all the more awful must be their jealousy, anger, and caprice.
In Greece and Rome there also reigned fears that after death
the soul would suffer at the body's being tossed about on the
waves, eaten by wild beasts and vermin, burned by fire, or
buried in the earth, and that it might either be doomed by
arbitrary Fate or some angry god to reappear in a loathsome
reptile or predestined criminal, or be confined forever in a
universal subterranean prison-house, so gloomy that the
high-minded Achilles had rather be a poor man's servant than
reign king of the dead. And those who had escaped these
primitive fancies went no further, before the advent of
Stoicism, than to suppose that, while a few highly favored
souls entered Elysium, many others were consigned to endless
torments in Tartarus.

The greatest of the Roman poets tells us how foully life
was crushed to earth by the weight of Religion, when
Epicurus, the glory of the Greeks, dared to be the first to raise '
his eyes against her hydra-headed shape, and to withstand
her face to face. No fear had he of the thunders of the gods,
but stories about their wrath only inflamed his courage, till he
taught his followers to tread on their enemy as she had trod-
den on them. Thus he revealed the worth of human life and
made earth equal heaven. So writes Lucretius about the great
liberator of thought.

Epicurus was born, early in the year 341, on the island of
Samos, to which his father, who was a schoolmaster, had come,
among other Athenian colonists. That he gained his first
experience of the evils of superstition by assisting his mother
to practice witchcraft, may be merely a slander. At eighteen
he went to Athens for a year or two, but had seen little of
other philosophers and read few books except those of Demo-
critus, when, at the age of thirty-two, he began to teach in
Mitylene and Lampsacus. There his disciples were few, though

300 B. c.] EPICURUS. 43

enthusiastic, but they became very numerous at Athens.
Thither he came in 3U6, one year after the unsuccessful at-
tempt to limit free speech described at the close of the last
chapter. Epicurus taught without molestation, as he was all
the better enabled to do by his taking part in public worship,
and keeping clear of politics, in which there was then but
little to be accomplished.

He bought a house in the city, and laid out there the garden
which became the home of his disciples, whose frugal wants
he supplied freely, so that they did not suffer when Athens
was besieged and distressed by famine. Epicurus was wont-
to boast that his own food cost him less than a penny a day,
and that he needed only bread and water to be able to equal
Jupiter in happiness. To one friend he wrote, " Send me a little
Cythnian cheese, so that if I choose, I may fare sumptuously."
"he feasts, which were held every month to bring all the friends
together, and every year, apparently on the 3d of February,
to celebrate the founder's birthday, were rich in nothing but
the wit and cheerfulness of the guests. Among them was a
slave and several women, one of whom, Leontium, wrote a
l)ook of some ability against Theophrast. Her reputation,
like that of her sisters, is not spotless, for public opinion at
Athens did not favor the attainment of high culture by ladies
of good character. But it is certain that Epicurus never prac-
ticed or favored sensuality, but took much pains to repress it
among his friends. One of the most zealous modern oppo-
nents of Epicureanism, Lecky, justly pronounces its founder
" a man of the most blameless character," and similar testi-
mony is given by early antagonists like Cicero, Seneca, and
Chrysippus, the last being almost contemporary with Epicurus.
The chief fault now charged by competent critics is vanity,
Tnit this cannot have been excessive in a man who said to his
friend : " Among the infinite blessings which wisdom has given
us, O Metrodorus, I have never thought it an evil that this
famous Greece has not known us, nor even heard our names."
Such a speech would scarcely have been made after the
school was fairly established at Athens ; for there Epicurus
soon won many followers, not so much through the power of

44 THE CONQUEST OF PAGANISM. [300 B. c.

his formal teachings, as through that of his personal society.
Such a large and harmonious company of friends has never
since been known. Before the close of the thirty-five years
which he spent tranquilly in his garden, his disciples became
numerous enough to fill whole cities. The Macedonian and
other conquerors were destroying the political institutions on
which the religion of the Greeks was founded, and hence,
Epicureanism, though bitterly attacked by the Stoics, Peripa-
tetics, and Platonists, encountered but little actual persecution,,
except in Crete and Messene, during the second century B.C.

The three hundred books which Epicurus wrote have almost
entirely perished, but Diogenes Laertius has preserved three
letters in which the great rationalist gives a summary of his
philosophy. Besides these, we have the enthusiastic poem of
Lucret'ms, already quoted, and also many criticisms and ex-
tracts in Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, Epictetus, and Marcus
Aurelius, as well as some supposed traces of Epicureanism in
Ecdesiastes. So soundly were the fundamental principles laid
down by Epicurus, that no changes were made by any of the
disciples. One of the system's chief peculiarities is that its
adherents cannot be divided into schools. The senses are
taken as the sole and sufficient source of knowledge, and all
errors ascribed either to misinterpreting or to discarding them.
Nothing can be created out of nothing, and whatever exists
has done so from all eternity. There is no reality but that of
matter. The ultimate elements of all bodies must be indivisi-
ble, for infinite and endless divisibility is inconceivable. These
atoms vary in size, weight, and form, but not in substance ; and
these differences, with others in their number and arrangement,
enable them, in their continual motion through boundless space^
to produce all things and beings, even the soul and the gods.
r>reams an(l visions prove the existence of deities, but there is
no proof that they take any notice of our conduct.

They must be supposed to be perfectly good, and if so they
can have no jealousy or anger. They must also be thought
perfectly happy, but this requires that they should not trouble
themselves about human actions, or any other natural phenom-
ena. Whatever takes place is the result of physical causes^

300 B. c.] EPICURUS. 45

acting themselves out in innate and natural laws. All life
and thought proceed from the constant motion of the
atoms ; and these have power to change their direc-
tion spontaneously. This variability, which is the most
important addition made by Epicurus to the atomic
theory laid down by Dernocritus, enables the mind to de-
velop itself independently, and thus each man can become
the author of his own destiny, and defy the Fates. To the
independence of the soul, the only limit is her connection with
the body. Both come into existence together, both grow,
flourish and decay together, and both dissolve together into
the original atoms out of which they were compounded natur-
ally. Demons can therefore have no existence, and there is
no reason to fear them, or any evils after death. Nor need
we dread either fate or the gods. In public worship Epicurus
himself joined gladly, as he might well do, since his philos-
ophy did the gods much more honor than was then paid by
any of the reigning theologies. Some of his disciples, how-
ever, were less reverential, and one of them, named Danaae,
as she was led to execution for having saved her lover from
being put to death by a tyrant, exclaimed : " Men do right to
despise those gods who suffer me to die for this ! " The gen-
eral attitude of the Epicureans toward the national religion
was simply that of good-natured indifference. Great pains
are taken by Lucretius, as well as by his master, to guard the
reader against admitting the agency of the gods, the demons,
or the Fates. For this purpose several explanations, often
puerile, are given of every natural phenomenon, with the as-
surance that after all it makes little difference which supposi-
tion we take, provided that we keep clear of supernaturalism.
Scientific accuracy was never much valued in the Garden, and
its master refused to admit that the sun has any considerable
size, that the earth is round, or that there are human beings
on the other side.

In fact, the Epicureans did not value any kind of culture
for its own sake. Their object was happiness ; and learning,
virtue, and pleasure were all measured by the same standard,
that of tendency to produce felicity. In recognizing this as

46 THE CONQ UEST OF PAGANISM. [300 B. c.

the true aim of man, Epicurus agreed with Aristotle, Zeno,
and most other classic philosophers ; but he went much further
than they did in identifying pleasure with happiness. He
takes care, however, to tell us that : " When we call pleasure
the end of life, we do not speak of the pleasures of the de-
bauchee, or the sensualist, as some think who are ignorant of
our opinions or who misrepresent them in malignity ; but we
mean freedom of the body from pain and of the soul from
anxiety. For it is not continued chunkings and revels, nor the
society of women, nor rare and costly viands that make life
pleasant, but it is such sober contemplation as searches out
the grounds of choice and avoidance, and puts to flight those
vain fancies which harass the soul." Health of body and tran-
quillity of soul are the main elements of happiness according
to Epicurus ; and he considers the state of the mind more im-
portant than that of the body, since mental pains and
pleasures affect all our future existence, but bodily ones touch
us only for the moment. He who is truly wise would be
happy even while he is being roasted alive, says Epicurus ;
and he has himself left us a letter, sadly misrepresented by
Plutarch, telling us that, though he was dying of the most
excruciating pangs, yet memory of what he had taught gave
him such bliss, that this day which would be his last was the
happiest of all his life.

Especially necessary for true happiness is the protection of
the soul against superstitious fears and useless longings. All
our desires are divided by Epicurus into three classes • First
come the natural and necessary ones, like those for food and
drink, wishes which it is easy to gratify and injurious to-
leave unsatisfied ; and these should be indulged moderately.
But when these desires go beyond what is necessary to avoid
pain, they become unnecessary though they remain natural, and
then they enter the class of wishes which can be either re-
pressed or gratified without danger, and may be indulged in or
refrained from, according as the tendency in that particular
instance is to increase or diminish happiness. Then, lastly,
come those desires which are not only unnecessary, but also
unnatural, since they arise solely out of errors in opinion, and

300 B.C.] EPICURUS. 47

which are not only hard to gratify, but injurious to those who
indulge them ; of such desires ambition is a good instance,
and all these evil passions the wise man will repress as com-

Jletely as possible. A similar classification is made of our
ains and pleasures under four canons. First, such pleasures
as do not lead to equal pains are to be sought. Second, such
pleasures as do this are to be shunned. Third, such pains as
produce greater pleasures are to be endured. Fourth, such as
do not are to be avoided. In making these classifications of
pleasures, pains, and desires, Epicurus goes far beyond
Aristippus, and also in laying stress on tranquil, rational, and
permanent happiness, rather than on momentary gratification.
Indeed, the preference of repose over excitement is one of the
essential features of Epicureanism. Its disciples were com-
manded to scorn the pleasures of luxury on account of the
pains they bring.

Its wise man will not fall in love, nor will he marry unless
under exceptional circumstances. Nor will he become a poli-
tician, and especially not a tyrant ; while he will not suffer
himself to be a Cynic, a beggar, or a drunkard. Tranquil
happiness will be his aim and this he may if he chooses attain
here on earth. Hereafter there is nothing to fear or hope.
Our happiness depends not on how long, but on how wisely
and virtuously we live. Out of the natural distinctions, just
described, between such pains and pleasures as increase our
happiness and such as diminish it, arise the moral laws.

Thus Epicurus declares, with perfect consistency and accu-
racy that, " We cannot live pleasantly unless we live pru-
dently, nobly, and justly, nor can we live prudently,
nobly, and justly without living pleasantly." Prudence
in rightly choosing and avoiding pains and pleasures he
found so important as to say, " Better is the misfortune of the
man who has planned his way wisely, than the prosperity of
him who has aimed foolishly." Among other virtues, meek-
ness and gratitude seem to him especially sacred.

All we really need to be happy according to Epicurus, is
virtue ; but there is much else that is valuable, though not
essential. Especially important is friendship. It is so much

48 THE CONQ UEST OF PAGANISM. [ 300 B. c.

for our happiness to have friends that the wise man will grad-
ually come to love them for their own sake, and will even be
willing to die for them. He who can do this is happier than
he who is friendless. The Epicurean was not, however, taught
to give the interests of others, or the welfare of the State, the
value which these objects had for the Stoics, and now have
for modern utilitarians. Nor was this theory as well provided
with sanctions as it might have been on its own ground, or as
well qualified as some of its rivals for calling out exception-
ally high virtue. Still it has the great advantages, that it may
be adopted by any one, whatever his opinions about theology
or metaphysics, that it can be easily understood, and that it is
not likely to tempt any one to sacrifice his own happiness in-
tentionally. Perhaps it has made no saints, but it has certain-
ly not made any hermits, persecutors, or hypocrites. But the
real character of Epicureanism is best to be understood from
these sayings of its founder, preserved partly by his disciples,
and partly by his critics and adversaries :

" It is both more noble and more delightful to give than to re-
ceive a kindness." "If you would gain true liberty, serve
philosophy." " It is misery to be continually beginning to
live." "He enjoys wealth most who needs it least." " Great
pains are short, and those that last long are but slight."
" Seldom does fortune find the wise man unprepared."
" Cheerful poverty is noble." " He who does not find his own
possessions ample, would be miserable, though he were lord of
all the earth." " Live according to nature, and you will
never be poor ; follow public opinion and you will never be
rich." " If you would make Pythocles rich you should not
add to his possessions, but take away some of his desires."
" Consider with whom you eat, rather than what you eat ; for
feeding apart from your friends is living like a wolf." " The
beginning of safety is knowledge of our faults." " Laws are
made for wise men, to keep them not from doing but from
suffering wrong." " Thanks to nature that what is necessary
is most easy to get, and what is most hard is not needed."
'" Only the wise man knows how to be grateful." " He will
treat his slaves mercifully, and call them his friends." "Even

271 B. c.] EPICURUS. 49

i

though he lose his eyesight, he will still endure life." "It is
not he who renounces the gods believed in by the people that is
impious, but he who believes what others do about them."
* It is possible for the wicked man to hide himself, but never
will he feel confident that he can do so." " The law which is
not useful to society is unjust." " In my sickness I did not
make speeches about my sufferings, nor talk about them with
those who visited me ; but I continued to discourse as before
on the nature of things, taking care above all to show how
the mind, while sharing in the movement of this poor little
body, may remain tranquil and look after its own true inter-
ests. Thus I gave the doctors no reason for boasting that
they were doing something important for me, but my life went
on nobly and happily."

Thus Epicurus lived and taught, until the day came, when
he wrote the letter already quoted, begged his friends to re-
ember his doctrines, and passed tranquilly away. This was
in 271 and apparently on January 31st. His will directed that
four of his slaves should be emancipated, that his own memory
and also that of his parents and brothers should be
duly followed, that the children of two friends should be pro-
vided for, and that the bulk of his property, including his
library and his garden, should be devoted to the support of his
school. This continued to flourish for five or six centuries at
Athens, and to exert a mighty influence over all ancient
thought.

Epicureanism, though well known throughout Greece at the
time of its founder's death, did not show itself in Italy until
a century later, when the religion of the Romans had life
enough left to persecute, though that of the Greeks had not.
Two teachers from the Garden, Alcaeus and Philiscus, were
banished in 173, B. c. ; and twelve years later a decree was
passed threatening with the same punishment all philosophers
and rhetoricians who introduced new ways of thinking. In
156 similar measures were taken against Carneades and his
followers, as already mentioned. Less than a century later
the political revolutions had so weakened religious institutions
that the most famous of Epicureans seems to have excited no

50 THE CONQ VEST OF PA G AN ISM. [173 B. c.

opposition by publicly declaring in the senate, while head
of the Roman hierarchy, that death is merely an eternal sleep,
or by neglecting during the thirty years of his pontificate to
do any thing to check the decay of faith in the gods, or by
openly and constantly disregarding all omens and auguries,
for instance those which threatened his army before he won
his last victory at Munda, and those appealed to by his wife
and friends when they sought to keep him away from the
senate-house on the fatal Ides of March. Caesar's generous
toleration of the utmost freedom of speech compatible with
his own supremacy, won the applause of all Rome, and should
still be remembered in his favor, as should the disorders and
oppressions fostered by the aristocracy which he overthrew.
Still his establishing an absolute monarchy certainly did no
credit to his school of philosophy. This had now become the
most popular of all at Rome, according to Cicero, who tells
us that its adherents were among the best of men, a statement
to be expected from the friend of Atticus. Cassius, too, was
a staunch Epicurean, except in committing suicide.

Especially remarkable is the influence over Roman litera-
ture of the genial sect. Besides Greeks like Philodemus,
whose library was found at Herculaneum, and several early
Latin authors of little importance like Amafinius, Rabirius,
and Catius, it inspired those great poets, Ennius, Lucretius,
Catullus, Virgil and Horace. The first of these five was at
Rome while the Epicureans were persecuted, but he boldly
declared, that though the gods exist they pay no heed to our
doings, for if they did it would go well with the good and ill
with the wicked, as is plainly not the fact. Great applause
was won by the actor in one of his plays, who uttered this
doctrine as follows :

" Ego deum genus esse dixi, et dicam semper coelitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat humanum genus,
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male mails, quod nunc abest."
Still extant are, also, the lines in which he ridicules those
starving prophets and astrologers who pry into the skies, but
cannot see what lies before their feet, and who beg a trifle
from the people to whom they promise wealth.

173 B. c.] EPICURUS. 51

"Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat, creli scrutantur plagas."
# * * * •& *****

" Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachmam ipsi petunt."

And the Roman Homer further distinguished himself by
translating the fictitious history in which Evemerus spoke of
Saturn, Jupiter, etc., as mere men who reigned and passed
away, and also by versifying the comedies in which Epicharmus
had ridiculed the gods, and shown that they are nothing
more than names given by superstition to the all-potent forces
of nature. Thus Rome received the most advanced results of
Grecian thought.

Pacuvius, the nephew of Ennius, is noted for saying that it
is the sky which is really the father of all things, which gives
them birth, form, motion and nourishment, and finally takes
them back into itself, that there is no goddess Fortune, though
chance rules all things, and that those men who understand
the language of birds, and learn more from the hearts of other
animals than from their own, must be heard but need not be
listened to. For thus freely may be rendered the lines :
" Nam isti qui linguam avium intelligunt,
Plusque ex alieno jecore sapiunt quam ex suo
Magis audiendum quam auscultandum censeo."

No translation can easily be given of the pun made by
Attius, the contemporary of Pacuvius, on the rapacity of the
augurs :

" Nil credo auguribus, qui aures verbis divitant
Alienas, suas ut auro locupletent domos."

And I need only mention another minor poet who advo-
cated Epicureanism between the time of Ennius and that of
Lucretius, namely Lucilius the satirist.

IV.

That only fragments of these poems have come down to us
is not so much to be regretted as it would be if we did not
possess a masterpiece of philosophic poetry written by the
"chief poet on the Tiber-side," as Mrs. Browning rightly

52 THE CONQ UEST OF PAGANISM. [55 B. c.

calls Lucretius. In all classic literature there is no author
who is more worthy of our attention. And this not merely
on account of the zeal with which he shows what great crimes
religion has persuaded man to commit, and how dark our life
has been made by fear of the gods, but also on account of
his sunny faith that earth would be a paradise if it were free
from these terrors, his generous sympathy with all suffering
and sorrow, his hearty delight in the beauties of nature, his
high morality, his deep reverence for Epicurus, and his con-
stant pleasure in his own great work. Easily can we picture
him and his friends, when

" On soft grass beside a stream and under some tall tree they
lie,

Making merry at slight cost, while brightly smiles the tran-
quil sky,

And kind Spring the greensward sprinkles with her flowers
of richest dye." -II. 29-33.

All he writes is inspired by firm conviction that the one
thing needed for living happily is a pure heart. " At bene
non potuit sine puro pectore vivi." Indeed it is because Epi-
curus is found to help his disciples gain this that the Athenian
sage is said to be a greater benefactor than Ceres, Bacchus,
or Hercules. Living wisely and virtuously is so important to
Lucretius that he does his utmost to make us rise out of the
theological stage of thought into the scientific. Many of the
arguments by which he would work out this great deliverance
have become antiquated, but modern thought has not yet
fully mastered his central idea, namely, that all events take
place according to fixed laws, so that all phenomena are fully
accounted for by natural properties and forces, without the
necessity of referring to any supernatural agency or intention.

The poem opens with a dedication to the productive power
of nature, personified as Venus. Then follows a glowing
tribute to him who freed Greece from bondage to religion,
that mother of wicked deeds like the murder of Iphigenia.
Liberty from torturing fears can be maintained only by keep-
ing ourselves fully aware of the uninterrupted reign of those

55 B. c.] L UCRETIUS. 53

physical laws which make spring give us roses, summer wheat,
and autumn grapes. Every-where we see the order of nature ;
and all experience forbids us to suppose that any thing can be
created out of nothing or can return again into nothingness.
We see the various forms of matter constantly changing one
into another, while matter itself endures eternally. Some of
these forms, like those fine particles which are smelled but not
seen, must be extremely small. All visible things may be
divided into such invisible corpuscles ; but the smallest of
these are indivisible ; for if matter were infinitely divisible,
it would not have its known permanence and solidity. Flint
and iron must be formed out of solid elements. Softer sub-
stances can also arise out of similar elements, when these are
separated by sufficient portions of space; and that space exists
is certain, for if it did not, motion would be impossible.
Space exists, and the atoms also ; of these elements all things
are composed. This view, as Lucretius shows, is much
superior to those of Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxa-
goras. That the second of these three daring innovators, for
instance, was mistaken in calling earth, air, water, and fire the
four elements is shown by the fact that these are only transi-
tory forms, behind which we must find the eternal principles.
One of these latter, space, is further shown to be infinite in
extent, and the atoms are declared to be infinite in number.
Space and atoms have kept continually meeting together and
separating spontaneously from all eternity, and after trying
motions and unions of every sort which were soon given up,
have at last happened to fall into forms which were naturally
fitted to endure and have accordingly done so as the component
parts of our earth.

Then the second book describes the processes by which all
forms of life have been produced out of the accidental union
of differently formed atoms, more or less separated by portions
of space. Much labor is given to showing how these cor-
puscles vary greatly but not infinitely in form ; how they are
colorless, odorless and without sensation, and how they owe
their power of union to that spontaneous tendency to change
of motion which is the cause of free will in man. One of the

54 THE CONQUEST OF PAGANISM. [55 B. c.

most important propositions here advanced is that of the
probability of the existence of other worlds like this.

Strongest of all the six books in argument is the third, de-
signed to show that we have nothing to fear after death from
the gods, and no reason to dread being haunted by ghosts and
demons. We see the mind oppressed by the body's diseases,
and we know how the overpowering violence of wine dis-
orders the soul. Mind and body grow up and become old
together. Children go about with feeble limbs and slender
sagacity. The body matures and power of mind develops
also. Then, finally, when all our frame is shattered by the
mastering might of time the intellect gives way. It natu-
rally follows that the soul is dissolved, like the body,
into its original elements, some of which Lucretius
considers indescribable, though not supernatural. Again, if
the soul is immortal and makes its way into our body at the
time of birth, why is it that we are unable to remember the
period before we were born ? But if the nature of the mind
can be so completely changed that all memory of past actions
is lost, that, methinks, does not differ greatly from its death.
If souls transmigrate so that a man is born again as a child,
why is it that the latter is childish and not manly in intellect ?
It may be answered, that the soul grows weak in a tender
body ; but those who admit this must acknowledge also that
the soul shares the body's weakness so far as to partake of its
mortality. Such arguments prove that death is nothing to us,
for it is merely our ceasing to exist. We Celt no distress on
account of aught that happened before we were born, and so
we shall feel none, whatever may take place after we die. All
the stories of Tantalus, Sisyphus, and the daughters of Danaus
have no meaning except as images of the mental tortures,
which in this life punish the superstitious, the lascivious, the
ambitious, and the discontented.

The fourth book, and the most fanciful, attempts to account
for our sensations by explanations which modern psychology
has rendered valueless, but the closing pictures of the folly
and danger of sensuality must always have keen interest for
the moralist.

55 B. c.J LUCRETIUS. 55

Nearly one half of the next book is given to astronomical
speculations, in weaving which Lucretius seems to have been
but little benefited by such progress as had even then been
made in science. We must, however, admire the boldness
with which he incidentally denies that the sun and moon are
divinities, or that the earth is so well adapted to the wants of
man that there is sufficient reason to believe in special creation
and providence. The last six hundred lines of this fifth book
are more closely in harmony with our most advanced views of
the history of man than is any other portion of classic litera-
ture. This passage begins with pointing out the great fact of
the survival of the fittest. Then comes a description of those
early men who could not till the ground, and who had no
knowledge of fire or of metals, and no clothing, not even the
skins of wild beasts. By and by they got themselves huts,
furs, and fire ; the man united himself with one woman in
marriage, and then the race began to soften, and neighbors
came together in friendship. Various sounds were uttered
naturally, as is done by all animals in expressing different emo-
tions, and thus the advantage of giving names to things be-
came manifest, so that language arose spontaneously. Then
the sun taught men how to cook food, as they saw the ripe
vegetables soften in its heat. Cities now were built and kings
enthroned. Temples and altars, too, were reared to the gods,
whose shapes were seen in dreams, whose power was supposed
to guide the regular succession of the seasons, and whose
home was fancied to be the sky, out of which snow, rain, hail
and lightning seem to be sent down. " O wretched generation,
how many tears and terrors have ye prepared for us ! True
piety is not prostrating ourselves before statues and sprinkling
blood on altars, but it is keeping our mind in perfect peace."
Meantime forest fires melted metals for men, who found that
tools could thus be fashioned. Copper first came into general
use, and slowly it gave place to iron. Weaving was invented
and the ground was cultivated. Music and dancing began to
make life happy. Ships, walls, and roads, poems, pictures, and
statues, men learned to make by slow degrees as they advanced
step by step. " Thus time and reason gradually bring forth

56 THE CONq UEST OF PAGANISM. [55 B. c,

all things. One by one and in due order come to light all
the different arts, and advance towards complete develop-
ment."

Thus ends the finest part of the poem. The remaining book
tries with poor success to give the causes of various phenom-
ena, especially thunder and lightning, magnetism, and pesti-
lence, and ends with a powerful picture of the horrors of a
great plague.

That this horrible scene is that in which Lucretius meant to
leave his readers seems incredible. Nor can he have intended
to say so little about the most attractive part of Epicureanism.
Fully to carry out his purpose of freeing man from subjection
to religion it would have been necessary for him to devote at
least one more book to showing how morality arose spontane-
ously, not supernaturally, and thus encouraging us to believe
that we are able to live divinely without assistance from the
gods. That the poem was really left unfinished by its author
is manifest on every page. Of the circumstances of his death
at the age of forty-four we know nothing ; but Yirgil was in
all probability right in saying that he who found out the causes
of all things, and trod under foot every fear, and inexorable
fate and the roar of greedy Hades, lived and died happily.
" Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas ;
Atque metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus strepitumque Acherontis ava'ri."

— Georgics II. 490-2.

The poem just quoted deals a sharp blow to the fancies still
current, that birds and beasts have supernatural knowledge, by~
showing how their movements are naturally influenced by the
same meteorological causes which produce storms. — II. 415-22.

The sixth Eclogue also gives such an account of the origin
of all things from those seeds or elements, out of which are
formed earth air, fire, and water as would have satisfied
Lucretius. Virgil's greatest work, however, was produced
under a reactionary conservatism, as was that of Horace.

One of the most significant facts about the great poem of
Lucretius against religion is that no answer appeared for sev-
enty-five years, and then only an insufficient one, by Manilius.

55 B. c.] SCIENCE. 57

Little notice was taken by contemporaries, and this may be
due to the fact, that it came to light at the same time as the
union of Caesar, Pompey and Crassus, in the first triumvirate
B. c. 55, and but a few years after the fatal weakness of the
Roman system of government was made manifest by the con-
spiracy of Catiline. It was during the trial of the conspira-
tors, that the head of the national hierarchy declared his dis-
belief in all future rewards and punishments, and the whole
senate listened without protest. The unwillingness to resist
these attacks on religion made by Caesar and Lucretius, was
largely due to the prevalence of the views of Epicurus, Pyrrho,
and Carneades. But it was also owing to the fact that Rome
was now invaded by superstitions of a peculiarly immoral
character. Thus in 186 the senate had attempted to suppress
the secret worship of Bacchus, on account of resulting mur-
ders and adulteries, for which several thousand guilty fanatics
wore brought to justice ; in 139 the Chaldaean astrologers had
to be expelled from Italy ; and in 50 the consul was obliged'
to deal the first blow in destroying the temple of Isis, zealous
worship at which was one of the surest signs of unchastity.
But the most important help to intellectual liberty came
from studies whose importance few philosophers appreciated,

v.

The year 306, when Epicurus began to teach at Athens, is
also memorable as that in which the title of king of Egypt
was formally assumed by the first Ptolemy, rightly surnamed
Saviour, since he founded such libraries, menageries and mu-
seums, and brought together so many scientific and literary
workers that he did more than any of the philosophers to de-
liver nis age from ignorance. Under him and his successors,
Alexandria became the center of science. Such exactness of
speech and thought as was unknown even to the Peripatetics
was now introduced by Euclid, still a well known author, by
Archimedes who founded hydrostatics, by Apollonius of Perga
who discovered the laws of conic sections, and by other great
mathematicians. Thus astronomy was enabled to speak witb

•58 THE CONQUEST OF PAGANISM. [250 B. c.

authority, ancf to make new revelations. Before 250 B. c.,
Aristarchus of Samos announced that the sun is the center
and ruler of our system, and thus dealt a fatal blow to the
fancy that sun, moon, and stars are all under the dominions
of gods enthroned on Mount Olympus or in the clouds around
our earth. This great discovery I attribute to Aristarchus,
and not to an earlier Samian, Pythagoras. The latter did in-
deed teach that the earth moves, but he seems to have thought
that the sun moved also, and that the real center of the system
was merely a luminary created by his own imagination. At
all events his views were kept secret by his disciples, but
Aristarchus taught the truth so plainly that he was charged
with impiety towards the earth by Cleanthes the Stoic. Soon
-afterwards the size of the earth was calculated with approxi-
mate success by Eratosthenes, who first suggested the method
of locating places according to latitude and longitude which
was afterwards brought to such perfection by Hipparchus of
Rhodes, that both terrestrial and celestial geography were
.almost established scientifically. This success, together with
his enrolling the visible stars to the number of 1080, his
thereby discovering the precession of the equinoxes, his de-
tection of the eccentricities of the solar and lunar orbits, his
•calculation of the solar year but 12 seconds more than its real
length, his tables of the apparent motions of the sun and moon,
his directions for the systematic prediction of eclipses and for
the study of plane and spherical triangles, and his construc-
tion of a map of the starry firmament as well as of accurate
tables of the apparent motions of the sun and moon, are such
achievements as place the name of Hipparchus above that of
any observer in Alexandria. It is doubtful whether any one
else in all antiquity showed as much scientific ability. It was
on the basis of his observations, and with the aid of an as-
tronomer from Egypt, that Julius Caesar was able to accom-
plish his famous reform of the calendar, and take this import-
ant means of regulating human life forever out of ecclesiasti-
cal control. The Roman year then varied from 355 to 378
days according to the caprices of the priests, who had managed
to get the seasons three months out of the way. The great

56 B.C.] VICTORY. 59

i

Epicurean established the period still in use, of three years of
565 days followed by a fourth of 366 ; and no change has
since been found necessary except that adopted in 1581 of
not taking the close of a century as a leap year, unless divisi-
ble by 400.

This achievement greatly promoted the ascendency at Rome
of scientific views, which must have been regarded with favor
ever since it was found out in 168 that a great battle could be
won by showing the soldiers that there was no need to dread
an eclipse. Thus the Romans were enabled to conquer the
terrified Macedonians in a war into which their king, Perseus,
had been inveigled by an oracle, running somewhat thus :
" You the Romans shall conquer." No martial defeat is more
significant than that of this monarch who followed oracles by
a republic whose soldiers had respect for astronomy.

VI.

*

Thus the religion of Rome was simultaneously attacked by
philosophy, science, foreign superstition, and civil war. No
wonder that Lucretius and Caesar met with no resistance from
its adherents ; that the augur, Marcellus, was able to write
against augury and yet retain his place ; that Cicero, while say-
ing all he could against the Epicureans, did not think it best
to find much fault with their views about theology; that this
great orator said even the old women had given up believing
in punishment after death, and that he represented a priest as
arguing that there are no gods. Such a denial could not, as
he admits, (De Nat. Deorum, I. 22) be safely made in a public
oration, and there was still a general belief that, whatever the
gods might be, it was for the welfare of the state to worship
them, a view of which Varro, the antiquarian, is the best known
representative.

During the twenty-five years between the publication of the
great poem by Lucretius, B. c. 55, and the opening of the
first public library at Rome in the Temple of Liberty, B. c.
30, free thinking was less opposed in the metropolis, and free
speech less restricted, than was the case any where else before

60 TUB CONQUEST OF PAGANISM. [29 B. c.

the present century, except in Athens, where tolerance flour-
ished for about seven hundred years after the Garden was
opened by Epicurus. The temples at Rome were deserted and
dilapidated, lucrative places in the priesthoods remained va-
cant, and sacred festivals had become nearly obsolete, when
Octavius returned, in B. c. 29, from his conquest of Anthony
and Cleopatra. The notorious irreverence of Julius Caesar, as
well as his good-natured indifference to personal criticism, ex-
erted a deep influence in the metropolis. From Rome and
Athens, as well as from Rhodes and Alexandria, rays of light
shot out over the empire and fought against various forma-
of darkness. Thus, after many martyrdoms, were liberty of
speech and scientific views established in opposition to Greek
and Roman Polytheism. This is the first and still one of the
greatest victories achieved by free thought.

CHAPTER III.

PARTIALLY SUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS AT REACTION DURING THE
FIRST TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.

We have seen how freedom of thought was attained in
Athens under the successors of Alexander, and finally in Rome
during those civil wars which ended with the defeat of Antony
and Cleopatra at Actium. On the return to Rome of the vic-
tor, who soon took the title of Augustus, he found the temples
deserted and in ruins, vacancies among Flamens and in other
priesthoods waiting for candidates, and the games of the
Lupercal given up. Men of sense had found out the falsity of
the national religion, but philosophic and scientific culture was
so rare that there was still a general longing, especially among
women, for something to worship. Jehovah, Isis, Cybele,
Bacchus, and other foreign deities had great popularity ; as
was the case with the Chaldsean astrologers and other fortune
tellers. In order to check these dangerous superstitions, and
at the same time promote such a slavish state of mind as was
necessary to the permanence of the empire, Augustus made
steady efforts during all his reign to revive the national relig-
ion. In the first year after his return he built or repaired
ninety-two temples in the metropolis, where he also soon
erected three hundred shrines, called trivial from their location
at the street corners, where they were dedicated to the deified
ancestors and other petty divinities whom the common people
loved. In honor of these little gods a new festival was
founded in the month henceforth called August. So numerous
did festivals and holidays now become that they occupied one
third of the Roman year. This was in keeping with the wish
of the emperor to amuse the citizens, for whose wicked
pleasure he had 8,000 men and 3,500 wild beasts killed in the
arena. Theaters and bath-houses were kept in constant activ-
ity, while food and money were distributed lavishly. Build-

62 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [17 B. c.

ing of temples continued during the forty-five years of this
reign ; and the example of the emperor was followed by his
crafty wife and by his leading adherents ; to one of whom,
the mighty warrior, Agrippa, we owe the majestic Pantheon,
reared in gratitude for Actium. Well might Augustus say
that he found Rome built of brick, and left it of marble.

One of the most important religious events of this period
was the celebration of the Secular Games, so-called because
they originally took place at intervals of 110 years, a period
made long enough to prevent any one from witnessing two
such solemnities.

The stately ode to Apollo and Diana, sung by noble youths
and maidens, may still be read among the works of Horace ;
for this " Pig of the Epicurean herd," as he jestingly calls him-
self, stooped, despite his boast that he was too free to follow
any master, to become the poet-laureate of the reign of des-
potism and superstition. He even professed some faith in
special providences, and praised people who offer sacrifices.
Still his prevalent opinion was that the gods dwell in unbroken
idleness ; his ridicule of dreams, witches, goblins, astrologers,
and miracles was unsparing, and his pleasures were not
troubled by any scruples.

Horace, like Maecenas and Virgil, was too fond of the favor
of Augustus to be a consistent disciple of the Garden. Nor
did this school of philosophy gain much credit from Nero's
friend and victim, despite the freedom with which Petronius
ridiculed superstition and exposed his master's vices after his
own doom was sealed. Greater praise belongs to the pains
taken by Seneca's correspondent, Lucilius, to place the erup-
tions of JEtna among natural phenomena, the boldness in at-
tacking the priesthood which caused Veiento's banishment,
and the frankness with which Pliny the Elder, whose philo-
sophical affiliations, like those of the author just named, are
rather uncertain, declares, at the beginning of his Natural
History, that it is a sign of human weakness to inquire about
the figure and form of God, that it is ridiculous to suppose
that the ruling power, whatever this may be, gives any heed
to our affairs, and that it is a comfort to know that the Deity

17 B. c. ] THE POLICY OF A UG USTUS. 63

cannot do every thing — for instance, raise the dead. Later in
this work he exposes the falsity of magic and astrology, ut-
terly denies the possibility of immortality, and calls the prac-
tice of deifying the emperor, an attempt to make a kind of
God of him who has but just ceased to be a man. Still Epi-
cureanism found no champion of much prowess during the two
centuries from Lucretius to Lucian.

The year of the Secular Games, B. c. 17, is also memorable
for the publication of a powerful presentation of the grandeur
and terror of classic polytheism, by a poet whose private
character is good enough to permit the hope that there was
some sincerity in his conversion from the Epicureanism mani-
fest in the Georgics. The praise given in this latter poem to
Lucretius is not repeated in the ^Eneid, where Virgil writes
as if he and his readers really believed, not only in Jupiter and
Tartarus, but in omens from the flight of birds, spectral visita-
tions, prophetic dreams, and other miracles. That the only
action of which all his gods and goddesses approve unani-
mously is the seduction and desertion of Dido, shows the moral
value of the religion which Augustus and his poets loved.

How cruelly these deities had punished those who despised
them had been related, with great animation and elegance, in
the Metamorphoses by Ovid, who was hard at work versifying
the national calendar, and incidentally praising the recent law
against libel, when he was sent into life-long banishment,
partly because he had written too licentiously, even for his
emperor, and partly because he knew too much about the
abominations in the palace. The same penalty fell upon
Cassius Severus, who had attacked the emperor's friends with
excessive severity, and spoken freely for liberty before his
pupils as well as in his history, which latter was burned by the
senate. So was that of Labienus, whose zeal against tyranny
had caused him to be nicknamed Rabienus by the courtiers,
and whose indignation now led him to starve himself to death in
the tomb of his ancestors. These outrages took place during
the last six years of the reign of Augustus, but he had begun
by suppressing the publication, commenced by Julius Caesar,
of the proceedings of the senate, the last refuge of free speech>

-64 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [17 B. c.

while soon after the Secular Games he .had searched through
•Greece and Italy after Sibylline books, and burned all
those whose predictions were obnoxious, to the number of
two thousand. Worship of Jehovah, Isis, Cybele, and Hesus
was checked by this emperor, and his successors. No wonder
that Pollio, whose public library has been mentioned, and
Messala, who had fought beside Brutus at Philippi, thought
it best to give up writing history and speaking in public,
or that Tiberius, though he was son-in-law of the emperor
and own son of the empress, was driven by his fears into
voluntary exile. That Livy was permitted mildly to censure
Julius Caesar is due to the devout tone of his history ; as
the solitary independence which Tibullus was allowed to hold
among the Augustan poets may be attributed to his early
death. One result of the reactionary and repressive system,
thus established by Augustus, and maintained with terrible
cruelty by his successors, is that no great author appeared for
nearly forty years after his death, and even then Rome had to
look for her literature to the provinces, where this tyranny
had been but little felt. Seneca, Columella, Quintilian, and
Martial came from Spain, both Plinies from Como, Apuleius
and Fronto from Africa; Phsedrus, Plutarch, Epictetus, and
-Galen from the shores of the ^Egean, and Lucian from the
banks of the Euphrates. Most of the few and obscure writers
in the generation after Livy and Ovid perished under Tiberius,
Caligula, and Claudius, for such trivial offenses as speaking
-disrespectfully of Agamemnon, or writing an obituary poem
in anticipation of the death of the emperor's son. Schoolmas-
ters were banished for praising tyrannicide : a lawyer, named
Julius Gallicus, was drowned in the Tiber for defending a
-client obnoxious to the emperor. When a similar case was
offered to the noted orator, Domitius Afer, he replied,
" Who told you that I can swim better than Gallicus ? " The
only safe field for eloquence was in carrying on prosecutions
for treason ; and success here was rewarded not only with
enormous wealth, but with consulships and priesthoods. Spies
and informers were in high favor during nearly all this cen-
tury, and so were executioners and assassins.

29 A. D.] JESUS. 65

ii.

It is to the hatred of Tiberius against every appearance of
political independence, as well as to that pitiless intolerance
of all differences about belief or worship in which ancient
Judaism outstripped all contemporary religions, that we must
attribute the crucifixion, probably on March 25, A. D. 29, of
the most famous of martyrs. His words are so well known,
and his life still so little understood, that I shall only at-
tempt, as I have already done in the Tndex, a Boston news-
paper, for September 6, 1883, to say whether he was strictly
a rationalist.

No one should speak positively about the opinions of Jesus,
for the records of his words are uncertain as well as unreliable.
The Greek of the New Testament is only at best a translation
from the language he really spoke, and there are strong rea-
sons for believing that none of the Gospels was written until
long after his death. In fact, we have no right to be confi-
dent that any particular saying is really his, especially as we
often find contradictory and inconsistent assertions put into
his mouth. Still, there are some general opinions which occur
so often and are expressed so earnestly that they have been
generally and reverently accepted as his, and have done much
to determine his place in history.

There can be little doubt that Jesus showed a noble free-
dom from prevailing superstitions and formalisms as well as a
daring courage in disobeying despotic mandates. In predict-
ing that the temple would be destroyed, he ran much greater
risk than any one would now in declaring that Christianity
will pass away. Calling himself greater than the temple was
claiming to stand above the national religion; and such phrases
in the first three Gospels agree with his prophecy in the fourth,
that worship would soon cease to be held at Jerusalem. All
the narratives say that he drove by force from the temple the
sellers of the birds and animals used in sacrifice; and it has
been inferred from the statement that he " would not suffer
that any man should carry any vessel through the temple," as

66 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [29

well as from his desire to have the building called " the house
of prayer," that he wished to put down the whole system of
burnt offerings supposed to have been ordained by Jehovah
through Moses. Perhaps he was only trying to suppress un-
seemly noises in a place used mainly for devotion ; but even
this was rebellion against the priests. The charge that he
threatened to destroy the temple shows that he was not con-
sidered friendly to the national worship. We never read of
his making any offering there ; but we find him bidding
those who would do so put it off, in order to do their
duty toward their brethren. Evidently, he thought that love
to God and man was holier than the whole Jewish ritual. Two
ceremonies which he found already in use, baptism and the pas-
chal supper, he seems to have regarded with some favor; but
the former rite was never administered by him, and the passage
to the effect that he declared it necessary to salvation is spurious.
That he meant to turn the Jewish passover into the Christian
communion is particularly unlikely from the fact that he invited
no one but the twelve Apostles, not even his own mother, to par-
ticipate. His wish was evidently to found religion on moral-
ity rather than ceremony ; and thus he worked directly,
though unconsciously, in favor of free thought. Ceremonial
religion means subjection to priests. Put morality above
ceremony, and you make conscience free.

Among the precepts of Moses most hostile to individual
liberty were the command to keep the Sabbath and the pro-
hibition to eat certain kinds of food. But Jesus declared that
no man can be defiled by what he eats. Still plainer was his
assertion of his right to heal the sick on the Sabbath as well
as that of his disciples to gather grain in the fields. That he
wished to have Sunday observed instead of Saturday is merely
an unauthorized fancy. His words and acts show plainly that
he did not wish to have observance of the Sabbath enforced.
The same disregard of the authority of Moses was shown in
the declaration of a new law about divorce. And, in com-
manding non-resistance, Jesus condemned not only Moses, but
Joshua, Samuel, David, and Elijah. Indeed, he passed a dar-
ing censure on the conduct which had most been praised in

1 •' rr-Tflj

29] JESUS.

the past, and which the men around him were most eager to
imitate, as the nation soon did, to its destruction. What he
said against fasting, swearing, and washing of hands, is less
important, but not to be overlooked. Here, he did not come
so directly in conflict with Moses as with the scribes and Phari-
sees ; and the severity with which he denounced these re-
ligious rulers is rather to be wondered at than imitated : for
Paul, who had been brought up among them, never speaks of
them but with praise. Jesus called them whited sepulchers
and vipers, and in the same spirit sent a defiance to his sov-
ereign beginning with, " Go and tell that fox." Similar inde-
pendence appears in his behavior when on trial by Herod, the
high priest, and Pontius Pilate. It seems to be the come-
outers, iconoclasts, and non-conformists who imitate Jesus
best.

There is, however, reason to believe that some of the pas-
sages just referred to express not so much the sentiments of
Jesus as those of the Church of the second century, which had
then separated much more widely from Judaism than was
attempted previously. Paul, the most independent of the
Apostles, is shown by Acts xxi, 24, as -well as by his own
Epistles (I. Cor. vii., 18), to have kept the law himself and to
have directed all Jews to continue to do so, in spite of their
becoming Christians. His view that Judaism was about to
give place to Christianity, and was not obligatory on heathens
who became Christians, met with so much opposition from the
eleven Apostles that they can scarcely be supposed to have
heard such ideas from Jesus. The Revelation, undoubtedly
a Christian utterance of the first century, is full of reverence
for the temple and the law ; and this feeling reigned in the
early Church according to Acts. Other ancient documents
might also be cited to justify the opinion that nearly a cen-
tury elapsed before Christianity reached the position to which
it would have been elevated at once, if Jesus had really treated
the temple, the Sabbath, and the law as he is said to have
done. It is probable that Judaism had much the same hold
on him as Catholicism had in the fourteenth century on Tauler
and other mystics, who honored its creeds and its ceremonies.

68 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [29

but only as helps to morality, and with full knowledge that
duty has an intrinsic importance, in comparison with which
forms and dogmas are worthless. What Jesus was histori-
cally is of little importance compared with the fact that the
Four Gospels represent him as a rebel against the religion in
which he was brought up, and thus give the strongest encour-
agement they can to heretics, come-outers, and free-thinkers.

But it must be remembered that Jesus justified his indepen-
dence, not by declaring the right of all men to follow reason
and conscience, but by claiming that he had a supernatural
authority, greater than ever had been given to any other man,
or ever would be. Nothing less was involved in his calling
himself Christ or Messiah, and it was for making this claim
that he was condemned to death. Again and again, he asserts
his right to be called Lord and Master, to forgive sins, to rule
the winds and waves, and to command angels and evil spirits.
All who have taught before him are thieves and robbers, but
his words are never to pass away. He is the bread of life, the
true vine, the way, the truth, and the life. No free-thinker
ever spoke of himself thus. I would not insist on single
phrases, but all that is said of his relations with his f ellow-men
shows his desire for unreasoning agreement and unhesitating
obedience. Those who would enter his kingdom must become
like little children. Those whom he called to follow him must
forsake business and property, father, mother, children,
brother, sister, and wife. Even waiting to bury a dead father
was not allowable. Keeping all the moral law blameless was
not sufficient for him who would not give up all his property
and devote himself to propagandism. The work of the dis-
ciples after his death, unto the end of the world, among all
nations, was to be "teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you." Denial of his inspiration
was the only sin which could never be forgiven ; and refusal
to listen to him or the apostles or any of the seventy disciples
was a greater sin than that of Sodom.

Here, the foundation was laid for that exaltation of the-
ology above morality which has since done so much harm.
To the same effect are such texts as, " He that believeth not

29] JESUS. 69

shall be damned ;" " He that believeth not the Son shall not see
life, but the wrath of God abideth on him ;" " He that
heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath ever-
lasting life, and shall not come into condemnation ;" " No
man cometh unto the Father but by mo." Perhaps none of
these speeches were spoken literally by Jesus ; but they are
all closely connected with him, as are the passages about be-
coming childlike, committing the unpardonable sin, and
incurring greater guilt than that of Sodom. Thus, Jesus has
been continually appealed to as an authority for such reliance
on faith as has greatly hindered the growth not only of moral-
ity, but of her best protector, liberty. Especially unfortunate
for the progress of freedom have been these two sayings :
" Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed,"
and " Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled."
The fundamental law of liberty is that no one should be con-
strained to enter even the house of God, or urged to believe
any thing to which he is not led by his own experience. How
far Jesus is to be held responsible for the despotism exerted
in his name by the Christian Church, it is hard to say. We
hear of his promising the Apostle thrones, giving them the
keys of heaven or hell, with power to settle what should
be considered right and wrong, and declaring that he who
will not obey the Church shall bo considered outside of it, like
the heathen. But, on the other hand, we often find him
check the bigotry of his disciples ; and it may be judged
from some passages in Matthew, as well as in Acts, that
he wished to have all the brethren take part in church govern-
ment. Whether his personal preferences would have been for
Episcopalianism or Congregationalism can never be known.
What is certain is that he did not wish to have individuals
think and act for themselves. He cannot be charged with
striving to check liberty of thought, for he probably did not
know what it was, though he might have learned something
about it from the Sadducees if he had not treated them as
teachers of error. What independence he showed was as-
a mystic, not as a rationalist ; and the great work of his life
was in laying the foundation for a religion which gave a much

70 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [43

higher place to ceremony than he would himself have wished,
but which has not shown any more regard for faith and
belief than was fully warranted by his words and acts.

in.

So the repression of free thought was carried on, sometimes
with cool craft and sometimes with bloody fury, during a cen-
tury and a quarter after the battle of Actium ; but no oppo-
sition of importance was made except by the Stoics. Augus-
tus sought their friendship and suffered them to dissuade him
from many cruelties. But Tiberius had nothing to do with
them, except to murder Cremutius Cordus for calling Brutus
and Cassius the last of the Romans, in a history which the
senate promptly suppressed. Julius Kanus, when Caligula
closed a controversy by saying that he should be put to death,
answered, as if this was the greatest favor the tyrant could
bestow ; and when his friends expressed regret, said : " Why
are you sad ? You are anxious to know whether the soul is
immortal. 1 shall find out at once." (Seneca, Dial, ix., sec.
xiv.)

Among the conspirators against Claudius was Foetus, whose
wife, Arria, strove in vain to save his life. When he was
compelled by law either to suffer his memory to be disgraced
and his property confiscated in consequence of his execution,
or else to inflict capital punishment with his own hands, his
courage gave way, and she offered to die with him. Her son-
in-law, the famous Thrasea, said : " Would you have your
daughter kill herself with me, when my turn comes?" "If
she has lived as long and happily with you as I with
Poetus, I am willing," answered Arria. At last she was
suffered to arouse her husband's courage by plunging his
dagger into her own breast, and then giving it back with the
words : " My Pcetus, it does not pain me." (Pcete, non dolet.)

Thrasea lived to assist his fellow-stoic, Seneca, in giving the
empire five years of such good government that the quinquen-

-54] THE STOIC MARTYRS. 71

nium Neronis became proverbial, as should be remembered in
excuse for the brilliant free-thinker's connivance at the tyrant's
crimes. Nor should we forget Seneca's constant activity in
doing good, or the purity of his private life. So, while re-
gretting the favor he shows to augury and astrology, we
must admire his independence, not only in censuring two
abuses which long found defenders among less original moral-
ists, namely the gladiatorial games and the practice of giving
to every one that asketh, but also in zealously urging the
duty of mental culture, in neither recognizing undue authority
in others nor claiming it for himself, in denying that the gods
are angry with those who do not worship correctly, and in as-
serting the equality of slaves with their masters, as well as
the right of women to the highest education. Among the
many passages which show his advanced position are these :
" I know of nothing more destructive of virtue than witness-
ing the games in the arena." (Epistle 7, sec. 2.)

" The wise man will never give without sufficient reason ;
for unwise gifts must be reckoned among base extravagances."
" He errs who thinks it easy to give alms." " Prodigality is
never noble, especially not in charity." (De Vita Beata^ Dial.
7, ch. xxiii., sec. 5, and ch. xxiv., sec. 1. De. JSen.y book i., ch.
ii., sec. 1.)

"No one drives away vice until in her place he accepts
wisdom." " Ease without books is a living death." " In the
perfection of our reason lies the happiness of life." (Epistle
75, sec. 10 ; 82, sec. 3 ; 92, sec. 2.)

" The mind can reach nothing grand unless it rushes out of
the beaten track into regions where it has feared to mount."
" Knowing any thing consists in making it our own, and not
thinking of masters." " If we are satisfied with what is already
found out, we shall find nothing more." " Those who have gone
before us are not masters, but guides." " Truth is open to all,
and has not yet been taken possession of, but much will be
left to be discovered by future ages." (De Tranq., ch. xvii.,
sec. 11 ; Epistle 33, sees. 8, 10, and 11.)

" Read my writings as those not of one who knows the
truth, but of one who seeks it and seeks it boldly, coming

72 A TTEMPTS A T RE A CTION. [54

under subjection to no one, and taking no man's name."
(Epistle 45, sec. 4.)

" No one has known God ; many think ill of him, and h&
harms them not." " The gods are neither able nor willing to-
hurt us." " He who is at peace with himself is at peace with
them all." " No sane man fears them." " All their power is
to do good, and they bear mildly with the errors of wandering
souls." (Epistle 31, sec. 10 ; De Ira, book ii., ch. xxvii., sec.
1 ; Epistle 110, sec. 1 ; De Ben., book iv., ch. xix., sec. 1, and
book vii., ch. xxxi., sec. 4.)

"Let your slaves laugh, or talk, or keep silence in your
presence as in that of the father of the family." " Remember-
that he whom you call your slave belongs to the same race as
yourself. Will you despise a man for circumstances which
may become your own ? " " We all have one common origin,
and no one is nobler than another, unless he is more ready for
good deeds." _ " Who is nobly born ? He who is naturally-
virtuous." (De Ira, book iii., ch. xxxv., sec. 2. Epistle 47,
sec. 10. DeBen. book iii., ch. xxviii., sec. 1. Epistle 44, sec 5.)

" It is our mind that makes us rich." " I will lead you to
those noble studies which take away sorrow. On all of them
you have entered so far as my father's old-fashioned rigor per-
mitted. Oh, if that best of men had cared less for the cus-
toms of our ancestors, and been willing to have you master
the lessons of philosophy ! Yet you have laid the founda-
tions for all studies. Now return to them once more, and
they will be your consolation and joy. When they have really
entered your soul, you will be safe from trouble." (Ad Hel~
mam, Matrem, ch. xi., sec. 5, ch. xvii., sees. 3 and 4.)

In exhorting Nero to mercy, he told him that a tyrant is
merely a monarch who takes pleasure in shedding blood, and
that it is the duty of a king to be the father of his people, to>
prefer their interests to his own, and to show that the state
does not belong to him, but he to the state. (De Clem., book
i., ch. xi., sec. 4, ch. xii., sec. 1, ch. xiv., sec. 2, ch. xix, sec. 8.)
And nothing can be freer than his frequent blame of the three
previous emperors, especially Caligula, whom he stigmatizes
as a tyrant. His tragedies, too, which were written to ber

65] THE STOIG MARTYRS. 7£-

read to the leading men and women at Rome, declare that he
who fears his sovereign will give up justice, and that nobler
sacrifice cannot be offered to Jupiter than that of an unjust
king. (Hippolytua, line 429, Hercules Furens, 922.) Seneca
was the first to show the full meaning of free thought and
assert its rights against both priests and kings, and in favor of
women as well as slaves. Much as we may blame his com-
plicity in Nero's earlier crimes, we must not forget that he
left the tyrant's service, and was one of his victims.

With him perished his nephew Lucan, who had taken part
in a great conspiracy, and whose poem on the battle of Phar-
salia is remarkable, not only for being written with his wife's
assistance, but for asserting the dignity of the senate, the only
institution which could legally check the tyranny of a Roman
emperor. The freedom with which he blames the gods for
permitting Julius Caesar to establish monarchy, and ridicules
the superstition which placed him and his successors among
the gods, is shown in the following extracts, mainly from
Rowe's version :

" Can there be Gods who rule yon azure sky ?

Can they behold Pharsalia from on high,
And yet forbear to bid their lightnings fly ?

Is it the business of a thundering Jove
To rive the rocks and blast the guiltless grove,

While Cassius holds the balance in his stead
And wreaks due vengeance on the tyrant's head ?

But chance guides all ; the gods their task forego,
And providence no longer rules below;

Yet are they just, and some revenge afford,
While their own heavens are humbled by the sword,

And the proud victors like themselves adored.
With rays adorned, with thunders armed they stand.

And incense, prayers, and sacrifice demand ;
While trembling, slavish, superstitious Rome

Swears by a mortal wretch that molders in a tomb."

VII. 445-450..

"Nor agonies, nor livid death disgrace
The sacred features of great Pompey's face ;

There virtue still unchangeable abode
And scorned the spite of every partial god. "

VII. 663-5,

74 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [65

" The gods in Caesar's triumph took delight ;
But Cato knew the conquered cause was right."

— 1. 128.

The most formidable opponent of despotism was not Lucan,
nor Seneca, but Thrasea, who, however, could do nothing
more than leave the senate-house when Seneca's apology for
Nero's murder of his mother was read aloud. Three years
later, the Stoic patriot persuaded his fellow-senators to spare
the life of Antistius, whom the emperor wished them to put to
death in revenge for a satire. Such opposition could not be
repeated successfully ; but Thrasea scorned to visit the senate
or take the annual oath of allegiance during the three terrible
years in which more than half of Rome was destroyed by
fire which Nero was believed to have set; the Christians were
cruelly persecuted ; Seneca and many other noble Romans
perished as traitors; the blood-stained adulteress Poppaea, whom.
Nero had married and murdered, was raised to a place among
the gods ; and the insane vanity ard indescribable licentious-
ness of the tyrant was revealed publicly. Nor was any part
in the public sacrifices, for the safety of the emperor, and the
preservation of the voice in which he showed such pride, or
in the religious honors profusely offered to the new goddess,
taken by this staunch non-conformist, priest though he was.
It soon became "known all over the empire, that public wor-
ship and politics had become too vile to allow the wisest and
most virtuous of the priests and senators to give even his
presence. Accordingly, Thrasea was brought to trial for trea-
son and impiety. He scorned to ask mercy or make any de-
fense, knowing that he could not save himself but might
harm his friends and family. Arulenus Rusticus, who was a
tribune, offered to veto the prosecution, but Thrasea forbade
him, saying, " This would be useless to me and fatal to you.
My time has come ; but you have many years in which you
may serve the state." The senate-house was surrounded with
soldiers, and the patriot condemned to death. His friends
crowded around him, but he bade them depart in silence.
His wife, the younger Arria, wished to die like her mother,
but he persuaded her to live for the sake of their daughter.

€6] 777^ STOIC MARTYRS. 75

The latter's husband, Helvidius was banished in this session,
when was also decreed the death of Soranus and his daughter
Servilia, each of whom protested that the other was innocent
and begged to be permitted to be the only victim.
Tacitus says that Nero, in killing Soranus and Thrasea, sought
to destroy virtue itself. The date of the murder of these
great Stoics, A.D. 66, is also that of the banishment of many
others. Among them was Cornutus, who told Nero that
nobody would read his poetry, and Rufus, who had been the
teacher of Epictetus, the champion of the right of women to
study philosophy, and the first opponent of infanticide, and
who, when set to work in chains on the canal now commenced
at Corinth, declared to another exile for free speech, Deme-
trius the Cynic, that to dig thus for the good of Greece was
more honorable than to sing like Nero.

After the tyrant's fall, Helvidius returned with the other
Stoics, and tried in vain to persuade his brother senators to
assert their independence against Vespasian, who finally com-
manded him to stay away from the sessions or else keep
silence. Refusing to do either, as is described by Epictetus,
(Discourses, book i., ch. ii.) he was banished, as were many
other philosophers, and finally put to death. Free thought
was, however, repressed mainly by patronage, until about
twenty-one years after Nero's death, when a new reign of
terror began, as Domitian " Cleared Rome of what most
shamed him," and murdered or banished all the Stoics. Among
the exiles was Epictefcus, who seems to have been less brilliant
and original than Seneca, but much more consistent and
earnest. No one has seen more clearly the duty of striving
at the same time to secure our own individual happiness and
that of our country and friends. (Discourses, book ii., chap,
xxii., sees. 18 and 19.) Nor has any one ever spoken more
powerfully in favor x)f mental independence. Especially
characteristic are the passages in which he urges us not to
shrink at being seen to do what we know is right, and declares
that no one can be the owner of another's will, and that noth-
ing should be more precious than truth. (Enchiridion, xxxv.
Discourses, book iv., chap. xii. Fragment cxxxix .)

76 A TTEMPT8 A T RE A GTION. [96

His high morality and piety are especially interesting on
account of his freedom from any fear of the gods, or any
belief in immortality. Worthy of note is also his censure of:
his emperor and former pupil, Hadrian. (Discourses, book iii.>
chap, i., and xiii.)

Among the fugitives from Domitian was Dion, surnamed.
Chrysostom or Golden-mouthed, who had advised Vespasian
to restore the republic. After long wanderings, in which he
sometimes worked as a gardener and sometimes begged hia
way, he reached the Danube in time to reveal himself to the
army, which had revolted at the news of the assassination of
Domitian, but was brought back to obedience by Dion's re-
sistless eloquence. Still we have the orations in which he
exhorted Trajan to devote himself to the welfare of his sub-
jects and imitate the gods in their philanthropy, as.
well as those in which he proclaimed to the common
people, who were his favorite auditors, the dignity
of labor, the sin of slavery, and the folly of turning
hermit. Among Domitian's victims was Arulenus Rusti-
cus, who had tried to save the life of Thrasea, and
now perished for writing it, as did the biographers of Cato,
Brutus, and Helvidius. Even the slaves who published these
books by copying them were crucified. It was the assassina-
tion of Domitian, in 96 A. D., that put an end to these one
hundred and twenty-five years of despotism, and made possi-
ble that period of eighty-four glorious years of constitutional
government, popular liberty, and literary activity which has
been called The Reign of the Stoics.

IV.

Among the philosophers who were banished by Domi-
tian and returned with Nerva were several women, of whom
the best known is Fannia, daughter of Thrasea and wife of
Helvidius. Twice she had accompanied her husband into
exile, before she was herself driven from Rome for having-
furnished the materials for his memoirs, a copy of which work
she carried away safely with her, so that she was able to put

96] THE EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN. 77

it into circulation after her return. It seems to have been in
the midst of these persecutions, that Sulpicia wrote the satire
in which she blames the tyrant for stripping Rome of wis-
dom, which is as necessary as valor for national greatness,
and prophesies that he will soon perish by the muses' wrath.
What we know of her as well as of Fannia, the two Arrias,
Servilia, Lucan's wife, and Seneca's mother, shows how much
independence their sex enjoyed during a period otherwise re-
actionary. Portia had sat in council with the other liberators
after the death of Caesar ; and the course of Roman politics
for the next century was much swayed by female influence,
first of Cleopatra, then of Livia, whom Caligula called an
Ulysses in petticoats, then of Antonia, who saved Tiberius
from being dethroned by Sejanus, then of Messalina, who
barely failed in her attempt to uncrown Claudius, and finally
of tbe terrible Agrippma, who succeeded in making Nero
emperor, and who wrote memoirs which were used by Tacitus.
The wives of governors and generals made themselves so
prominent in the halls of justice, and even the camps, as to
cause a decree, forbidding women from following their hus-
bands into the provinces, to be proposed during the reign of
Tiberius to the senate, which rejected it by a large majority.
Epictetus, who came to Rome under Nero, found the ladies
reading Plato's Republic, which asserts their rights to be edu-
cated like men and take equal part in the government. Octa-
via, the sister of Augustus, was the patron, not only of Virgil
but of the philosopher, Athenodorus, who dedicated a book to
her. At the close of the century Plutarch exhorts a young
bride to study the works of wise and learned men. All the
Roman ladies now spoke Greek, according to Juvenal, who tells
us how Maevia slew wild boars in the arena, Lauronia put
to silence the counterfeit Stoic who . reproached her sex,
Manilia drew up documents as skillfully as any lawyer, and
other women discoursed about Homer at their dinner-parties,
went into training to fight as gladiators, and kept informed
about whatever happened in all parts of the world. Mean-
time the old forms of marriage, which gave the husband abso-
lute power over the wife, had given place to simple contracts,

78 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [9S

which made both parties equal before the law, suffered women
to manage their property as they chose, and enabled them to
protect themselves from ill-usage by the effectual, though
morally dangerous remedy of easy divorce. Ortolan tells us
in his History of Roman Law, (section 448) that marital
power was now almost extinct, while the lifelong tutelage of
women under their kinsmen had passed away. Lecky says
that women " arrived during the empire* at a point of freedom
and dignity which they subsequently lost, and have never
wholly regained." (History of European Morals, Vol. ii., p.
322, Am. Ed.) Maine thinks that, " no society which preserves
any tincture of Christian institutions is likely to restore to mar-
ried women the personal liberty conferred on women by the
middle Roman law." (Ancient Law, p. 152. Am. Ed. See also-
Friedlander Sittengeschichte, Yol. i., p. 379, 3rd Ed.)

v.

This recent emancipation of the Roman women, together
with the honored place in Hebrew history of Deborah,
the ruler of Israel, Huldah, who told her king and people
their doom, Abigail, who disobeyed her husband openly, and
Esther, who persuaded hers to change his royal decrees, as-
well as the omission of obedience from the character of the
good wife in Proverbs, must be kept in mind when we read
the Epistles in which Peter and Paul command women to
keep silence in the churches, and wives to obey their husbands
in every thing and submit as unto Christ, the same words being
used here as in enjoining subjection on slaves. The Apostle to
the Gentiles, who had himself seen Queen Berenice sit among
his judges, went so far as expressly to sanction that most dis-
gusting of barbarisms and revolting abuse of power, as J. S.
Mill justly calls it, by which one human being is suffered to
consider himself as having a right to the person of another.
(See Mill's Political Economy. Book ii., ch. xi., xiii., Vol.
i., pp. 425 and 451. Boston, 1848. 1 Cor., vii., 4, xiv., 34,
35. Eph. v., 22, 24, 33, vi., 5. 1 Tim. ii., 11, 12. 1 Peter,
ii., 18 ; iii., 1.) The denial of the protection of divorce to

96] THE NEW TESTAMENT. 7£

women for any cause, (JUark, X., 12), and the prohibition of
baptism by females in the early church are also not to be over-
looked. Nor is the fact that precisely the same words are
used, not only in the Greek text of the HJpistles but in our
English versions, to command the obedience and subjection of
wives to husbands, as of slaves to masters, and of all men to God.

(Compare 1 Peter iii., 1, ii., 18-25. Hebrews xii., 9. Uph.
v., 22, 24. Col. iii., 18. Eph. vi., 5. Heb. xi., 8. 1 Peter
iii., 6.)

The abject obedience enjoined towards husbands and slave-
holders was also commanded in favor of tyrants. Thrasea
had but just begun his constitutional opposition to Nero, when
Paul said to the Romans : " Let every soul be subject unto
the higher powers : the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordi-
nance of God." And Peter declared, while the great struggle
to sustain the rights of the senate was at its crisis : " Submit
yourselves to the king as supreme, for so is the will of God."
It was after this was written, that Nero was condemned to be
scourged to death by the senate, whose support was much re-
lied on by Otho in the conflict with Vitellius, and whose au-
thority stood high with Trajan, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus
Aurelius, when all the books of the New Testament had been
composed. But no Apostle or Evangelist favors setting any
legal limits to monarchical power ; three of the Gospels make
Jesus approve of paying tribute to Tiberius, for the reason
that his face was stamped on the current coin, an argument
which would condemn the American, English, and French
revolutions ; and nowhere in the New Testament is there any
sympathy with the last struggle of the Jewish nation against
such tyranny as justified rebellion, according to Judges and
Maccabees. So great has been the authority of the Apostles
and Evangelists for eighteen centuries, that their sanction of
despotism cannot be left unnoticed in a history of liberty.

Neither can we overlook their upholding the worst error in
the Old Testament, and insisting that theological and cere-
monial mistakes are sinful and hateful unto God. Paul at
least knew enough about Greek literature to be aware that the

80 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [96

philosophers had taught for centuries, that "The gods are
never angry, and do nobody any harm." Such language as
has just been quoted from Seneca was very common, when the
Epistles were written. Yet the Apostle to the Gentiles de-
clares, that the form of worship which was universal among
them and which fed such holy souls as those of Socrates, Plato,
Cornelia, Portia, Cato, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, was so
• displeasing to the heavenly Father, as to make him give all
these erring children up to be tempted by the vilest of pas-
sions, and even send them strong delusions so that they should
believe a lie, and all be judged accordingly ; that idolaters
shall not inherit the kingdom of God; and that the Lord
Jesus shall come in flaming fire to take vengeance on those
who do not know God or obey the Gospel, and who shall be
punished with everlasting destruction. (Romans i., 18-22. 2
Thess. ii., 11, 12. Gal v., 20, 21. 2 Thess. i., 7-8.)

Many such declarations of the divine wrath against the
heathen are to be found in the Revelation which was probably
written shortly after the death of Nero, the letters of whose
name and title have a numerical valuation in Hebrew amount-
ing to six hundred and sixty-six, and whose place as the sixth
Caesar is referred to in chapter xvii., verse 10. An author,
who knew of the great fire which nearly destroyed Rome, of
the horrible persecutions of the Christians afterwards, and of
the simultaneous revolt in Spain, Palestine, Gaul, Germany
and Africa, of generals each of whom sought to make himself
emperor, may be pardoned for thinking that the Roman em-
pire would come to an end at once, and be succeeded by the
promised millennium. Nor is his indignation against the perse-
cutors unnatural ; but his denunciation of them, as well as his
prophecy of national ruin, must have done much to provoke
further cruelties. Peculiar intolerance appears in the intro-
ductory warning against the only person, who at that time
made claims to apostleship which could be called in question,
the author of that permission to eat meats offered to idols,
and to live with an unbelieving husband or wife, which had
but just been given to the church at Corinth. (See 1 Cor.
yii., 12, 14, viii., 4, x., 23-27. Rev. ii., 2, 14, 20, xxi., 14.)

•96] THE NEW TESTAMENT. 81

But even the most liberal of the Apostles warned the Cor-
inthians and Colossians against philosophy, (1 Cor. iii., 19.

Col. ii., 8.) and put heresy in the same black list as murder
and adultery. (Gal. v., 19-21.) Paul apparently knew of
nothing worse than thinking for one's self. Those who ven-
tured to do so were rejected from fellowship by the earliest
Christians and forbidden hospitality, (Titus iii., 10. 2 John
10. 2 Peter, ii., 1.) while those who spoke against the clergy
were regarded as : " Wandering stars unto whom is reserved
the blackness of darkness forever." (Jude 8-13.) Matthew
makes Jesus say, that he who will not yield to the church is
to be treated as one of the heathen, who were under the divine
wrath, according to the Apocalypse and the Epistles. All the

Gospels represent failure to agree with the Apostles and their
master as sinful, and unreasoning obedience as highly merito-
rious. Even the unutterable guilt of Sodom is said to be less
than that of not listening to the disciples; while charging
Jesus with insanity is called an unpardonable sin. We are
also told : " He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."
" He that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the
wrath of God abideth on him." " Whosoever shall not re-
ceive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise
enter therein." " Blessed are they that have not seen and yet
have believed."

These words, as well as the apostolic teaching of justifica-
tion by faith, show how necessary is acceptance of the author-
ity of Jesus for salvation, according to the New Testament.
Morality, of course, is insisted on also, and very strictly, but
it is nowhere acknowledged that salvation can be attained by
those who have no faith. Much as this doctrine of salvation
through belief rather than ceremony aided the assailants of
papal tyranny, the general current of free thought before
and after that struggle has been greatly checked by the sup-
port thus given to the idea that mental independence may im-
peril eternal happiness, as well as by the sanction of absolute
monarchy and conjugal tyranny, and the failure to favor in-
tellectual culture. This is all the more to be regretted, because
the New Testament has obtained more power in Europe and

82 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [96

this country than any other book, an influence easily to be ac-
counted for — partly by the unrivaled eloquence with which it
proclaims the universal brotherhood of all Christians, promises
that earthly distinctions will be abolished at entrance into
heaven, ascribes all phenomena to the agency of supernatural
persons, teaches the great virtues of purity and love, through
the most impressive, not only of teachers, but examples, and
offers eternal salvation to all who will believe and be obedient
— and partly by the consummate skill with which the Church
has been organized into an army of champions for a common
cause. Thus the early Christians, while contending for beliefs
and ceremonies which were deadly rivals to those insisted on
by the emperors, were yet working even more mightily than
they to carry out the great reaction in which political free-
dom, mental independence, and literary culture were swept,
away.

VI.

This success was mainly due to a fact already referred to,,
but more prominent in the Church Fathers than in the New
Testament. The Jewish, Greek, and Roman priests merely
performed ceremonies, and left the work of preaching and
teaching to be done by any one who might choose to take
it up; but among Christians there has been until recent times
very little preaching or writing about theology except by
ecclesiastics. Some distinction between clergy and laity,
seems to be recognized in Philippians, James, and First
Peter. Paul, according to Acts, took great pains to ordain
pastors over every church he organized, but from the lack
of reference to episcopal authority in thos 3 Epistles which
are undoubtedly his, it is probable that it was the other Apos-
tles, who established the hierarchy of deacons, priests or eld-
ers, and bishops. The last two titles were nearly synony-
mous until the end of the first century, however, and such is
the usage in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, which should
not be put later than this time, and which zealously assert the
divine authority of ecclesiastics and the sinfulness of disobe-

150] TEE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 83

dience. So does the Epistle of J'ucle, which has been already
quoted, and which may be ascribed to the beginning of the
second century, as may the strongly hierarchical Second Epis-
tle General of Peter. Still more favorable to clerical rule are
the epistles attributed to Clemens Romanus, Ignatius, and
Polycarp and apparently written in part at least about 150
A. D. A command to be subject to priests and deacons, as to
God and Christ, is found in the Epistle of Polycarp to the
Pldlippians, which is probably authentic, as are passages in
the letters of Ignatius declaring that the bishop sits in the
place of God, and that nothing is to be done without him.
To find the superiority of bishops to priests plainly asserted,
however, we must go on to the middle of the third century,
and look in the writings of Cyprian, as well as in the so-called
Apostolic Constitutions, which forbid rebellion against the
clergy. Thus their domination was gradually developed
as a logical result of the doctrine of justification by faith.
No book can foresee the future well enough to decide all con-
troversies. Uniformity of belief can be maintained only by
the authority of living rulers. The appearance of heresies,
even in the first century, favored the supremacy of the bish-
ops, and it was but one step further in logic, though a long
stride in history, to assert that purity of faith could not be
kept up without a pope.

Even the most rudimentary form of such an organization
naturally placed free thought under restrictions never felt be-
fore.

The Jews had never decided the rival claims of Essene,
Pharisee, and Sadducee. Even while the pagans punished
those who worshiped none of the gods, there was no objec-
tion to a man's placing any one of the national deities as high
as he pleased. Such fierce controversies as soon arose about
the rank and offices of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, were im-
possible outside of the Christian Church. No heathen or Jew-
ish books had made such a distinction between orthodox and
heretical as is seen in the New Testament ; and the early
Fathers are much worse than the Apostles. Ignatius is charged
with telling the church at Antioch that: "Whosoever de-

84 A TTEMPTS AT RE A CTION. [150

clares that there is but one God, so as to take away the divinity
of Jesus Christ, is a devil and the enemy of all righteousness."
Similar language was used during the latter part of the
second century by Tertullian, as will be seen at the beginning
of the next chapter. An inevitable result of this subjection
to church authority was a dislike to classic literature, towards
which none of the early Fathers show much respect, except
Justin Martyr, who also distinguished himself by placing not
only Abraham, but Socrates and all others who had lived di-
vinely, among Christians, as well as by strongly condemning
gladiatorial games, the guilt of which is not noticed in the
New Testament.

Nothing shows better the narrowness of the Church in the
second century than the readiness with which she cast out as
heretics the most scholarly and liberal of her children, namely
the Gnostics, so-called because they expected to be saved
through knowledge. Bigotry has destroyed their writings so
thoroughly, that we know little of them except from hostile
sources. They called themselves Christians, but cared little
for the authority of bishops or apostles, and borrowed freely
from cabalists, Parsees, astrologers, and Greek philosophers,
in building up their fantastic systems. Most of them agreed
in asserting the eternity, potency, and innate depravity of
matter, as well as in ascribing the creation to a Demiurge,
who was the God of the Jews, and who had a nature sadly
limited in power and intelligence, as is shown by the many
defects, not only in nature but in the Old Testament. Some
of the earliest of these visionaries were called Ophites, and
charged with worshiping the serpent as the emblem of wis-
dom, as well as with honoring Cain, Esau, and other rebels
against the Demiurge, and with circulating a Gospel according
to Judas Iscariot. The Gnostics generally believed that it
was to free man from the tyranny of Jehovah that Christ
came, and that he had no real flesh and blood, which latter
heresy was condemned as Docetism. The resurrection of the
body, as well as the outward second coming and material mil-
lennium, they rejected utterly. Among their many and wholly
independent teachers are Cerinthus, whom the Apostle John

150] REIGN OF LIBERAL PAGANISM. 85

is said to have refused to meet in a bath-house for fear the
roof should fall on them; Valentine, a Pythagorean, who
formed a powerful sect of believers in his doctrine of a great
hierarchy of ./Eons or emanations from God, Basilides, a Plato-
nist, who gained many followers to his teaching, that it is by
man's innate strength that the race rose from Paganism
through Judaism into Christianity, and that the individual
must raise himself from the earthly life to the heavenly ;
Marcellina, who is said to have "led multitudes astray in
Rome," during the reign of Marcus Aurelius ; and Carpo-
crates, who gave Zoroaster, Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, Aris-
totle, and Paul equal honors with Jesus, and taught that all
men must finally be saved, though most would have to be
purified by transmigration. Especially noted are Marcion, the
Stoic, and his followers, among whom was the learned virgin,
Philumene, for the boldness with which they rejected several
of the Gospels and IZpistles, as well as the entire Old Testa-
ment. They were especially shocked by the commands given
to the Hebrews to rob the Egyptians, and to massacre the
wives and children of the Canaanites. Much as we may fear
that the Gnostic literature was more remarkable for boldness
in speculation, than for clearness of reasoning or respect for
facts, it is a great pity that it should have been almost entirely
destroyed by ecclesiastical bigotry.

VII.

Most of the Gnostics just mentioned belong to that
period of constitutional rule and mental freedom which lasted
from A. D. 96 to A. D. 180 ; and which also gave us the works
of Plutarch, Quintillian, Suetonius, Juvenal, Pliny, Tacitus,
Dion Chrysostom, Arrian, Ptolemy, Apuleius, Fronto, Mar-
cus Aurelius, Galen, Pausanias, Celsus, Gaius the jurist, and
Lucian. To these happy years also belongs the delivery of
those discourses taken down by Arrian from the lips of Epic-
tetus.

First in time, as well as in popularity, is Plutarch, whose
extant works fill a much larger space than those of any other

86 A TTEMPTS A T RE A CTION. [150

classic author, and whose biographies of Solon, Aristides,
Demosthenes, Cicero, Brutus, Dion, Cato the younger, Agis,
Cleoraenes, and the Gracchi, did much to educate the leaders
of the French revolution. Some of the treatises known as
Plutarch? s Morals do great injustice to both Stoicism and
Epicureanism, and others show that he is far too credulous to
be much of an authority about either history or science ; but
the general tendency of these miscellanies is hostile to super-
stition, and favorable to female independence and mental
culture. Particularly valuable are the Conjugal Precepts, the
Discourse to a Prince, and the essays on Bashfulness, Super-
stition, Those whom God is Slow to Punish, and the Virtues
of Women.

Passing for a moment from Greek to Latin, we meet the
four contemporaries, Tacitus, Juvenal, Pliny, and Suetonius.
The great historian's real views about theology are probably
to be found in such declarations, as that the gods do not try
to protect us, but rather to avenge themselves ; that they care
as little for the most virtuous as for the vicious; and that their
permitting Nero to go on so long in iniquity shows that they
had nothing to do with the prodigies supposed to have taken
place after his murder of his mother (History, i., 3, Annals,
xvi., 33, and xiv., 12). There can be no doubt of his hatred
of tyranny, his sympathy with the champions of consti-
tutional freedom, and his deep conviction that, as he makes
one of these martyrs, Cremutius Cordus, declare during his trial
in the senate, errors in speech should be punished by words
only (Annals, iv., 35).

His own earliest work, showing how necessary it is that
eloquence should decline under a monarchy, seems to have
been written during the reign of Vespasian. But it was not
until after the fall of Domitian that he could record the doom
pronounced by history upon tyrants. Similar censures were
also made by the superstitious and scandal-loving Suetonius,
and involved no risk in the reigns of Nerva and Trajan, who,
like their successors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus
Aurelius, ruled constitutionally. Trajan even permitted sena-
tors to coin money in their own names and thus exercise what

150] REIGN OF LIBERAL PAGANISM. 87

Jesus considered a decisive privilege of sovereignty. These
liberty-loving emperors allowed great freedom of speech, and
Hadrian used only his influence against Favorinus for attack-
ing astrology ; but a law was enacted against secret as-
semblages, and Ignatius, with another bishop, was put to
death by Trajan, who sanctioned the torture of deaconesses
and execution of men steadfast in Christianity, carried on by
Pliny, nephew of the naturalist, and who gave orders that all
known to believe thus should be punished, but no attempt
made to find them out. This persecution was discontinued by
Hadrian, who was too skeptical to be intolerant, as well as by
Antoninus Pius, who honored freedom of speech and was too
practical to be superstitious ; but it was renewed by Marcus
Aurelius under exceptional circumstances which we shall soon
have to consider fully.

Juvenal drew on himself no hatred, except from the wor-
shipers of Isis, Cybele, and Jehovah, as he blamed the
Roman matron for breaking the ice to plunge herself into
the Tiber, crawling on bare and bloody knees around the
Campus Martius or going on pilgrimages to Nubia, the
Egyptians for carrying their quarrel, whether the crocodile
ought to be slaughtered or worshiped, into murder and
cannibalism, and the Hebrews for making every seventh day
one of idleness. Much more courage appears in his lashing
the follies and vices of the wealthy nobles, and declaring :
" No merit see I in a pedigree ;
Virtue alone is true nobility."

His eighth satire is inspired by this sentiment, which is not
•consistent with his scorn of newly emancipated slaves. His
ridicule of them, as well of the women who were asserting
their rights, seems to have met with little protest from con-
temporary authors, but, nevertheless, these reforms went on,
and were much assisted by such laws as that of Hadrian per-
mitting females to bequeath property, that of Antoninus
Pius allowing them to inherit it, and that of Marcus Aurelius
facilitating emancipation.

How worthy the Roman women really were of independ-
ence may be judged from the letters of the Pliny just men-

88 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [175

tioned. He shows that he had many friends whose virtue
came up fully to his own standard, which was that of a Stoic.
Among the most interesting epistles are nine relating trials
which he prosecuted before the senate, whose members voted
by secret ballot, and acted with such great freedom as proves
that the monarchy really was a constitutional one under
Nerva and Trajan. The latter, as he gave to the praetorian
prefect, who commanded the guards stationed at Rome, the
dagger that marked the office, said : " Take this and use it for
me if I rule justly ; if otherwise, against me." Hadrian was
capriciously despotic, but Antoninus Pius treated his subjects
like his fellow-citizens ; as we know from the testimony
of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who himself delighted to
honor Thrasea, Helvidius, Cato, Dion, and Brutus, and who
was always faithful to his own ideal of a kingdom which
maintains equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and holds
nothing so sacred as the liberty of the people. Under himr
indeed, the empire differed but little from a republic ; as may
be judged from the difficulty he had in persuading the senate
to pardon the adherents of Avidius Cassius, who rebelled A.D.
175, but was killed by his own soldiers. The senators refused
to proclaim universal amnesty until their emperor's second
letter, in which he begged for it as a consolation for the
death of his wife.

That sublime ?^d touching book which he wrote for his
own support amia the greatest trials, is full of passages like
these :

" If any one can show me that I am wrong in word or action
I will gladly change, for I seek the truth by which no one was
ever harmed." " It is not right that I should give myself pain,
for I have never given any willingly to others." " The immor-
tal gods are not angry with the wicked ; and why should I be,
who am destined to end so soon, and who am myself a sin-
ner ? " " The best way to revenge myself is not to become
like him who wrongs me. Remember that men exist for
each other, and that they do wrong unwillingly." " It is
peculiarly human to love those who do wrong." "Do not
make yourself either a tyrant or a slave to any man." " Take-

175] REIGN OF LIBERAL PAGANISM. 89'

heed not to become like the Caesars, but keep yourself the
friend of justice and the enemy of pomp." " Do not be
ashamed of being helped, for you are like a soldier storming
a wall, and what if you can not climb the battlement except
with a comrade's aid ? " " To change your mind and follow
him who sets you right does not lessen your independence."
" If you are able, teach others what is right ; if you are not,
remember that meekness was given you for this." " Find all
your joy in passing from one philanthropic action to another."
" My nature is patriotic, and my country is Rome as far as I
am an Antonine, but as I am a man, it is all the world. Only
what is useful to these countries is useful to me." " Have I
done any thing for the common good ? Well then, I have
had my reward."

Thus spoke the last great Stoic as he battled against the
Northern barbarians, who already threatened to overrun the
empire, at that time much weakened by a terrible invasion of
the Parthians, by the revolt of Egypt which was the granary
of Rome, and by the pestilence which is said to have destroyed
half of the population despite Galen's utmost efforts.

With this reign begins a long period of defeats, persecu-
tions, rebellions, and civil wars. Sad is the contrast with
the internal peace and prosperity which the empire had en-
joyed for nearly two centuries after the battle of Actium, with
little interruption, except that terrible year which succeeded
the death of N ero, and which led the Apostle John to prophesy
the speedy destruction of the nation and end of the world.
"New calamities naturally drew increased attention to these
predictions, as well as to the similar ones forged about this-
time in the dreaded name of the Sibyls, by some Christian,
who declared that Marcus Aurelius would be the last of the
emperors. Unfortunately this monarch was so superstitious as
to think that the gods could be seen bodily, and had shown
him remedies against giddiness and spitting of blood in
dreams. (Meditations, xii., 28, and i., 17.) He was led by a-
shameless impostor named Alexander, who had passed off a
tame serpent for an incarnation of ^Esculapius, and was then
selling oracles in Paphlagonia at the rate of seventy or eighty

90 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [175

thousand a year, to throw living lions into the Danube in hope
of regaining the favor of the gods. (See Lucian's Alexander,
the False Prophet.) He offered so many costly sacrifices that
the white oxen are said to have exclaimed: "If you conquer,
we are lost ! "

This excessive zeal led one of the most kind-hearted of men
to suffer Justin Martyr to be beheaded, and Polycarp, Blan-
dina, and other men and women to be tortured to death in the
arena, though he did not himself witness any of these horrors,
most of which took place in Gaul and Asia Minor, while he
was fighting on the Danube. If he had done nothing more
than enforce his own law, banishing people who stirred up
superstitious fears, we might consider him excused by the
dangers that threatened his empire. That he permitted men
and women to be murdered cruelly, merely for speaking what
they believed to be the truth, and abstaining from ceremonies
they thought impious, is a memorable instance of the wicked-
ness into which religion may lead even the best of men. This,
indeed, is all the more remarkable from the fact that Marcus
Aurelius, although one of the staunchest of Stoics, made an
impartial division of the salaries, now paid by the State to
philosophers, among the advocates of the four great schools,
so that the followers of Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus were
as liberally treated as those of his own beloved master, Zeno.
That he patronized the Epicureans, while persecuting the
Christians, may be due to the fact that the former, though be-
lieving as little in the national deities as the latter, made no
predictions of the coming ruin of the empire, and had no
scruples about fighting in its defense.

We, like Celsus, author at this time of a book against Chris-
tianity, known only through the portions preserved in the an-
swer made by Origen, may blame the early Christians for lack
of patriotism, dislike of mental culture, willingness to believe
without examination, readiness to admit people of disreputable
antecedents into their communion, scorn of business interests,
and excessive humility. But we must regret that they were
attacked by any weapons but argument and ridicule. Only
one man in that age seems to have been able, while rejecting

180] LUCIAN. 91

.all their peculiar beliefs, to do full justice to their unrivaled
purity, generosity to the poor, and moral courage. This was
Galen, the great physician, and the first real Agnostic ; for
careful study of the various schools of philosophy had taught
him that all such questions as those about Deity and immor-
tality lay wholly beyond the reach of human thought, while
his scientific researches taught him to prize such practical
knowledge as has actually become the most valuable possession
of man.

VIII.

How little even Marcus Aurelius could do to preserve
the old faith is shown in the great popularity obtained by his
•contemporary Lucian, who satirized paganism and Christianity
with equal boldness, and described the ease with which the un-
principled Peregrinus Proteus took advantage of the credulity,
generosity, and scorn of worldly riches in the early church to
make himself wealthy, no more keenly than he did the arts by
which an oracle in the name of ^Esculapius was established
by Alexander. Hearing that this prophet gave oracular
.answers to questions delivered, sealed and returned apparently
unopened, the witty free-thinker sent him scroll after scroll,
which he had sealed up so securely that the seer was unable to
open them clandestinely, and had to get what knowledge he
could out of the servants who brought them. Thus, on being
asked in writing whether his long hair was false, and informed
that the inquirer was studying local history, Alexander said:
" King Attis was not Sarbaldalachus ! " So when the question
was, where Homer was born, the oracle replied: "Go not by
sea, but take thy way on foot ! " Then Lucian sent eight
times the usual fee, with a scroll, asking when that rascal
of an Alexander would be found out, and received eight an-
swers which had nothing to do with anything in heaven or on
earth. After boasting of these victories over the oracle, and
trying to prevent a Roman senator who held a high office in
Paphlagonia from marrying a girl who Alexander pretended
was his daughter by Luna, the skeptic visited the prophet,

92 ATTEMPTS AT REACTION. [182:

and bit severely the hand held out to be kissed. Luciart
was attacked by the attendants, but they were called off by
Alexander who saw that his enemy was protected by an escort
of Roman soldiers. The servant of JEsculapius now an-
nounced that he would show how potent the god was in re-
conciling strifes, and then privately persuaded the skeptic,,
that it would be for his own interest to conduct himself rev-
erentially. Soon after, Lucian left for Greece in a ship lent
him by Alexander, but narrowly escaped being thrown into
the sea by the sailors, the captain fortunately taking his part.
After this he set about accusing the impostor publicly, but
was prevented by the entreaties of the king of Pontus and
Bythinia. On the death of Alexander, and the failure of his-
accomplices to agree who should take his place, Lucian did
however, publish, A. D. 18*2, his narrative, which was partly
designed, " to vindicate the honor of Epicurus, that truly good
and pious man, endowed with most divine knowledge, who
alone was acquainted with the beauty of truth, and taught it
to others, blessing all those with freedom and happiness who
attended to him." (Francklirts Lucian, vol. ii., pp. 451-497).
So numerous were the Epicureans at this time on the northern
coast of Asia Minor, especially at Amastris, now Amasserah,.
a sea-port about eighty miles to the westward of lonopolis^
the residence of Alexander, and so active were they in expos-
ing his impostures, that he publicly burned a book by Epicurus,
and commanded all Epicureans to depart before he celebrated
his mysteries, which represented the birth of Apollo and
^Esculapius, the recent discovery of the latter in the form of
a serpent, and the loves of the moon and the prophet. The
Christians were also sent away, but there was profound peace
between Alexander and the Stoics, Platonists, and Pythago-
reans.

Lucian's own preferences are plain, not only in this narra-
tive but in the dialogue called, The Double Indictment, where
Stoicism, personified as the Portico, brings a lawsuit against
Epicureanism, here termed Pleasure, for stealing away Diony-
sius, who was nicknamed the Deserter. The " Lady of the
Pictures," as Zeno's school is called after the pictures in the

182] LUCIAN. 93

porch where he taught, blames her adversary for teaching
men to wallow in the mire, for denying the providence of the
gods, and for poisoning the mind of Dionysius. Epicurus
answers that no unfair means were used to gain over this free
man in a free city, who left the Portico, because he was dis-
gusted at its secret profligacy, and convinced that the happi-
ness it promised was a mere sham and that his own health re-
quired him to live like a man, not a statue, and to make no
sacrifice of present happiness in hope of future bliss. It is
plain from this dialogue, as well as from those called Hermo-
timus, the Banquet, the Fisherman, etc., and also from the
letters and Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, that such exces-
sive self-denial and asceticism had now become a part of
Stoicism, that the sect was full of hypocrites, whose numbers
had been greatly increased by the patronage given by An-
toninus Pius and his successor. The other schools were no
purer, and that of Epicurus seems to have at last sunk much
lower than would have been permitted by its founder, though
his original error, of giving the disciple no higher object than
his own happiness, was largely to blame for the more serious
mistake of neglecting the dependence of happiness on fidelity
to the moral laws. Before the close of the fourth century
the sect had become extinct, and it produced no original au-
thor after Lucian.

There was nothing new in his attacking the popular the-
ology, but no one had been able to make it so ridiculous as
he does in the well known series of short dialogues about the
amours of the gods, which point he saw to be the weakest in
the whole ancient mythology. A longer and extremely pow-
erful composition of the same nature represents Jupiter as
utterly baffled by a philosopher, who forces him to confess
himself merely the tool of fate. Peculiarly strong in its
opposition to every form of theism is the dialogue called
Jupiter the Tragedian, because it opens with the theatrical
lamentations of that deity over the prospect that all faith and
worship will be destroyed by the arguments which Damis the
Epicurean is urging against Timocles the Stoic. The fright-
ened deities assemble in a council, at which Momus tells them

94 ATTEMPTS AT RE A CTION. [18$

that they ought not to be angry with any philosopner who is
led to question their existence by seeing how the virtuous are
suffered to perish in poverty, disease, and slavery, while the
wicked gain wealth and sovereignty, and how the robbers of
temples and other criminals remain unpunished, but the inno-
cent are condemned. Neptune wishes to have Damis struck
by thunder, and Hercules offers to pull down the house where
the dispute is held, but Jupiter decides that no such acts can
be permitted by the Fates, and that all he and the other gods
can do is to listen to their champion, and pray for his success.
The Stoic describes the order and harmony of all things, but
is told that he has no right to ascribe to Providence what
may be only the result of necessity or of chance. His
appeal to Homer and Euripides is met by the argu-
ment, that the former's gods have many weaknesses,,
and that the latter was really an unbeliever. Timocles next
urges that all nations worship, but Damis thanks him for re-
minding him that there are so many and wide variations in
religion, as show that it is all confusion and error. After
vainly referring to the oracles, then much in discredit on ac-
count of their ambiguity, the Stoic asks if the universe can
go on without a ruler any more than a ship can without a
pilot ; but the Epicurean says there is little reason to praise-
the pilot who made Sardanapalus a king and Socrates a crim-
inal, and who is constantly running the great ship against
rocks. Finally, Timocles declares that the existence of altars
proves that of the gods, but Damis only laughs at him, and
compares him to a malefactor who takes refuge in the
temple as in a sanctuary ; and Jupiter admits that, so far as
thinking men are concerned, his cause is lost. In the Icaro-
Menippus, Jove is represented as pulling up a trap-door in
the floor of his palace and listening to the prayers, two of
which are from different men asking incompatible favors at
the same time, and promising the same sacrifice, so that the
deity cannot tell what to do. Faith in immortality is derided
in the True History of the Necromancer and the Dialogues of
the J)ead, though these, like the Tyrant, are mainly designed
to show the vanity of all earthly pomp. To politics Lucian

182] CONCLUSION. 95»

paid little attention, and the picture of Nero at the Isthmus
of Corinth, is probably by some other hand, as is the Philo-
patris, an accusation of Christians for lack of patriotism.
That our author was right in calling himself not only a hater
of pride, imposture, falsehood, and ostentation, but the friend
of truth, honor, beauty, simplicity, and every thing that is
amiable and good, appears in his eulogy of his friend De-
monax, the philosopher, who, when the Athenians were talk-
ing about building an amphitheater to exhibit gladiators, told
them : " Before you do this you should destroy the altar to
Pity," and, when they were going to stone him because he
would not offer sacrifices, nor let himself be initiated into the
Eleusinian mysteries, disarmed all their rage by saying :
"Wonder not, O Athenians, that I have not sacrificed to
Minerva, for she standeth not in need of my offerings. And
as to the mysteries, the reason that I have kept away from
them is that if I should find them to be bad, I should not be
able to conceal this from the uninitiated ; but if they are good,
I fear that philanthropy would compel me to reveal them to
every body," an argument against all secret societies which
are not needed to protect their members against tyrants. So
unsparing is Lucian in his sarcasms, even against his own
master, Epicurus, that we must take care to give him the full
benefit of his own maxim : " Nothing truly good and valuable
is ever the worse for the ridicule thrown upon it, but comes
out only the brighter and more splendid, like gold from under
the hammer."

IX.

These dialogues did not prevent Lucian's becoming
governor of Egypt, and so shrewd and selfish a man would
not have gone on writing them if they had in the least in-
terfered with his comfort, his reputation, or his ambition.
They show, too, as does the history written but a little later
by Diogenes Laertius, that Epicureanism was very flourishing
during the second century. From these facts, as well as from
the steady growth of Christianity, we see that the efforts of

•96 CONCLUSION. [182

the emperors, from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius, to protect
the national religion against foreign faiths and domestic un-
beliefs, had met with but little success. Literary activity was
sadly checked by Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian ;
but even in the midst of this century of tyranny the rights of
free thought had been brilliantly vindicated by Seneca,
Tacitus, Juvenal, Dion Chrysostom, Epictetus, Lucian, and the
Gnostics enjoyed the protection of rulers who loved liberty.
Meantime that last refuge of free speech and political inde-
pendence, the senate, was heroically defended against Nero
-and Vespasian by those great Stoic martyrs, Thrasea and
Helvidius, and was restored by Nerva to an authority which
it retained for nearly a century, no influence having yet been
exerted on politics by the strong preference for absolute
monarchy shown in the New Testament. Nor did the oppo-
sition there offered to the emancipation of women prevent
the rapid progress of this movement, which was powerfully
encouraged by Seneca and Plutarch. Thus the second century
left rationalism in such popularity that its prospects would
not have been worse in the days of Lucian than in those of
Lucretius, if the diminution of mental activity had not opened
the way for the triumph of a new form of superstition and
intolerance, while the decline of martial vigor, under the
pressure of tyranny, threatened the empire with ultimate
conquest by barbarians, whose ignorance made it cer-
tain that they would support religion against philosophy.

UNIVERSITY

CHAPTER IV.

THE SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT AND ESTABLISHMENT OF
CHRISTIANITY.

How closely these two events are connected may be seen
in the works which Tertullian, the first Christian to attract
notice as a Latin author, published about 200 A.D. He de-
clares that the resurrection of Jesus ought to be believed in
because it is impossible ; that heresy causes eternal death ; that
heretics are not to be disputed with or permitted to appeal to
-Scripture ; that the Christian's authority is not the Bible but
the Church ; that nothing can be learned from any heretic ;
that those who possess Christ have no need to be curious
about further knowledge ; and that investigation is unneces-
sary for those who have the Gospel. " Nobis curiositate opus
non est post Christum Jesum, nee inquisitione post evange-
iium."

This language, as well as the forbidding ®f Christians to
become schoolmasters or professors of literature, is in full
harmony with the dislike of mental culture already pointed out
in the New Testament, (see p. 81) ; with the general condem-
nation of those primitive Unitarians contemporary with Ter-
tullian, the Artemonites, for studying Euclid, Galen, and Aris-
totle, and with the charge laid by the so-called Apostolic
Constitutions on the disciples of the third century to abstain
from heathen books. (I., vi.) So strict were the limits of
orthodoxy, however, as to bring even this hater of heretics
under the charge of being himself one of them, though this
is due mainly to his insisting on the speedy coming of the mil-
lennium, favoring the strictest asceticism, condemning second
marriages, forbidding women to wear ornaments, and yet
asserting their right to prophesy. Such were the views that had
but just been taught in Phrygia by Montanus, Priscilla, and

98 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGH1. [200

Maximilla, the last of whom said : "After me there is nothing
but the end of the world." The existence of female bishops
was characteristic of this sect, which soon spread to Africa,
where two of its members, Perpetua and Felicitas, gained the
crown of martyrdom. It was only the excessive desire of the
Montanists to maintain the purity of the Church, and carry
out the teaching of her founders, that caused them to be con-
demned as heretics. Maximilla, after devoting her vast wealth
to spread what she thought the true faith, and journeying
with bare feet over snow-clad mountains to do good to the
sick and ignorant, had to exclaim : " They chase me like a
wolf from the fold ; yet I am not a wolf ! "

There was no heresy in Tertullian's vivid pictures of the
activity of demons, which had been admitted by Matthew,
Mark, Luke, and Paul, nor in his placing the emperor second
to God, nor in his insisting, as Justin Martyr and Athena-
goros had done, on the literal resurrection of the body, a
doctrine afterward embodied in the creed falsely attributed
to the apostles. It was an advance on the New Testament
for the African controversialist to condemn infanticide and
the gladiatorial games, which latter had been justly said by
Minutius Felix to teach murder. Here the apostles would, no
doubt, have agreed with Tertullian ; but they would certainly
not have approved of his making God and the soul material ;
and it is probable that they would not have sanctioned his
asserting that each individual has a right to choose his own
religion; that no one is injured by another's choice ; that
there is nothing religious in compelling people to follow any
religion, and that no one, not even a man, can wish to have
worship paid him unwillingly. How such noble sentiments
came to be uttered by so fierce a hater of heresy is a prob-
lem, easily solved by the fact that the Christians were then
being persecuted by the pagans. When the Church grew
strong enough to persecute, she did so with little hesitation.

Thought was still free enough at the beginning of the
third century to permit Diogenes Laertius to compile the best
record extant of the opinions of Epicurus and his predeces-
sors for the benefit of some lady supposed to be either Julia

200] TERTULLIAN. 99

Domna, the empress, or else a Platonist named after the Stoic
heroines Arria. Alexander of Aphrodisias was able to gain
great fame as an expositor of Aristotle, whose system he
considers incompatible with belief in personal immortality.
The latter, at least, of these champions of philosophies soon
to pass into oblivion, belongs to Alexandria. And it was in
the capitol of Egypt, and during the first half of the third
century, that Sextus Empiricus wrote an elaborate statement
of Pyrrhonism, of which a translation is given in Stanley's
History of Philosophy, and in which the Skeptics, who hold
that knowledge about theology and metaphysics is too far
out of reach for us to need to feel any anxiety on such sub-
jects, are contrasted with the Dogmatists, who talk of Truth
as if it were their own private property, an error charged
not only on the Peripatetics and Stoics ; but also on the Epi-
cureans. The authority of the established rules of morality is
admitted by Sextus, but he insists that we ought neither to
believe nor disbelieve any thing so firmly as to make us uncom-
fortable or unable to receive further light ; and he gives most
of his first book to the ten illustrations of human liability to
error already stated on page 37. The second book discusses
the nature of deductive and inductive proof, and lays great
stress on the fact that all our knowledge is relative. The
third and last exposes the groundlessness, inconsistency and
mutual contradictions of the current beliefs in motion, time,
space, virtue, and deity. "Let the dogmatists first agree
among themselves as to whether God hath any body, or a
form like man's, or any special residence ; and then we can
tell whether we should agree with them. Surely if He were
self-evident there would not be such disputes as to who,
or what, or where He is. Moreover, those who say
that there is a God can not be excused from impiety, for if
they say that He takes care of all things, they make Him the
author of evil, and if they say that He takes care of some
but not of others, they make Him weak or else partial."

A new school of liberal thought had already arisen in this
learned city, under the lead of Pantaenus, who retained his
Stoic respect for knowledge when he became a Christian, and

100 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [200

who taught Clement of Alexandria to do such ample justice
to heathen philosophy as seemed heretical to popes and patri-
archs. We can have only praise for the scholar who dared
to say: (: Plato, Antistheries, and Cleanthes spoke by divine in-
spiration." " Each soul has its own proper nutriment, some
feeding on the Hellenic philosophy, the whole of which, like
nuts, is not eatable." " Those can not condemn the Greeks who
have only a mere hearsay knowledge of their opinions, and
have not entered into a minute investigation." " Before the
advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks
for righteousness, and now it is conducive to piety. For this
was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law the
Hebrew, to Christ." "It is impossible for a man without
learning to comprehend the things which are declared in the
faith." " The multitude are frightened at the Hellenic philos-
ophy, lest it lead them astray. But if the faith (for I can not
call it knowledge) which they possess be such as is dissolved
by plausible speech, by all means let it be dissolved. For
truth is immovable." ( Clement of Alexandria, Ante-Nicene
Library, vol. i., 71-2, 353, 360, 366, 372 ; ii., 350.) At the
same time he says to the heathen, who declined to give up the
customs handed down by their fathers, " And why do
we not use our first nourishment ? Why do we increase
our patrimony ? Do we still do the things for which,
when infants, we were laughed at? Then why do we
not abandon the usage which is evil, even should our fathers
feel hurt, and betake ourselves to the truth, and seek Him
who is truly Our Father, rejecting custom ? " " Let us then
avoid custom as we would the mythic sirens. It chokes man,
turns him away from truth, leads him away from life. It is a
wicked island, heaped with bones and corpses, and in it sings
a fair courtesan, Pleasure. Leave her to prey on the dead."
(Vol. i., pp. 85, 106.)

We are also indebted to this truly liberal Christian for
saying that women have as much right as men to study phil-
osophy, for filling a whole chapter of his Miscellanies, the
19th in book iv., with praises of Miriam, Theano, Aspasia,
Leontium, and Sappho, for asserting that Peter kept his wife

250] THE ALEXANDRIANS AND THEIR PUPILS. 101

until her martyrdom, for recommending matrimony, as well as
manual labor and the use of the bath and the gymnasium,
for acknowledging that much might be learned from heretics,
and for placing the authority of the Bible above that of the
Church. ( Writings, vol. ii., p. 167, 193-5, 451-2, 135-7 ; i.,
310-12 ; ii., 376, 476.)

n.

Thus Alexandria became the teacher of Christendom ; and
her influence increased under Clement's great pupil Origen,
who is said to have written 6,000 books, and is known to have
opposed the still lingering expectation of a speedy end of the
world, denied literal resurrection of the body, and proclaimed
that the divine goodness will ultimately raise all sinners, even
the devil and his angels, through stages of purification into
final blessedness. (De Principiis, book i., ch. vi. ; Writings
in Ante-Nlcene Library, pp. 53, 59.) He kept open what in
that day was the safest refuge from the yoke of biblical and
ecclesiastical infallibility, namely, the theory that only spirit-
ual truth is to be sought in what seems incredible, as did the
account of the creation to this early rationalist, or immoral, as
did the story of Jesus driving out of the temple the sellers of
the birds and animals needed for sacrifice, and overturning the
tables of the money-changers, so that the coin was poured
out on the ground. Even Origen's confessing Christ, under
the tortures which finally caused his death during the terri-
ble series of persecutions commonced by Decius in the middle
of the third century, did not prevent his condemnation as a
heretic by Jerome and Pope Anastasius in the next century,
as well as still later by the emperor Justinian and his serv-
ile council at Constantinople. Still the new school found
many champions, among whom was Origen's pupil Dionysius,
bishop of Alexandria, who met the local Second Adventists
with such tolerance and ability as to persuade them to confess
and renounce their delusion, which soon became extinct in the
Eastern Church, though, unfortunately, it still survives in the
Western, and who openly asserted his right to study all the

102 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [250

writings of the heretics, declaring that he had heard a divine
voice saying : " Read whatever falls into thy hands, for thou
art capable of judging and proving all things ; and from the
first, this has been to thee the occasion of faith." (Neander,
General History r, vol. i., pp. 652, 712.)

Among the teachers of Origen, at Alexandria, was the
founder of a new school of heathen philosophy, which soon
took the place of all the rest, and which greatly strengthened
the tendencies of Christianity toward mysticism, asceticism,
allegorizing, and Trinitarianism. This system, usually termed
Neo-Platonism, but more correctly called Alexandrinism, was
first taught about 200 A.D. by Ammonius, surnamed Saccas,
because he had been a porter. He committed nothing to writ-
ing, but is known to have asserted that Plato and Aristotle are
really in harmony, and also to have taken many ideas from
Pythagoreanism as well as from Christianity, to which latter
he was for a time a convert. It is either to him or to his
great pupil, Plotinus, that we owe the introduction into West-
ern philosophy of an Oriental dogma, which still holds a place
among us, namely that the highest knowledge comes in a way
transcending observation and experience, and baffling all logic,
so that truth is to be discovered, not through laborious inves-
tigation, but by sudden intuition, and is most fully known in
moments of exalted ecstasy. My readers are too familiar with
Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge,
Parker, and Miss Cobbe, to make it necessary to say more
about the fundamental dogma of Transcendentalism. Its ear-
liest votaries fell into as strange vagaries as its latest. Thus,
Plotinus was so thoroughly ashamed of his body, that he
would never say when or where he was born, or allow his picture
to be taken ; for he said it was bad enough to have to drag
about a shadow, without having to leave a shadow of that
shadow behind. It was his refusal to take any pains to relieve
this shadow's sufferings that caused his death. Similar dislike
of the body was the cause of the suicide of Jamblichus, who
made himself conspicuous in the beginning of the fourth cen-
tury as a defender of magic, demonology, and the mystical
might of sacred numbers. A later champion of this system,

270] THE ALEXANDRIANS AND THEIR PUPILS. 103

Proclus, wished to destroy all books except the oracles and
Plato's Timceus. Belief in the infallibility of Plato, aversion
to logical argument, and fondness for superstition are so com-
mon in this sect that it is pleasant to find it produce at least
one free-thinker.

Porphyry, a Tyrian, whose name is a Greek synonym for
Malchus, or the king, had been a Peripatetic, and kept at work
cross-questioning, first Plotinus, and then, when the master
became tired of replying, his fellow-pupil, the Amelius men-
tioned in Robert Browning's Colombe's Birthday, until he
managed to bring the Alexandrine system of philosophy into
logical consistency. A similar service was performed for the
writings of Plotinus, which have come down to us in Por-
phyry's edition. One of this keen thinker's own books did
much to awaken mental activity from the torpor of the Dark
Ages, by starting the great Realist and Nominalist contro-
versy, as we shall see in the next chapter. And while Porphyry
did his utmost to have men honor whatever he found good in
religions, he pointed out their defects with great skill and
courage. Thus he protested against the growing fondness of
his own school of philosophers for trying to gain knowledge
and power by approaching the gods through magic, or, as they
called it, theurgy, so vigorously as to call forth vehement op-
position from the superstitious Jamblichus. He also wrote a
voluminous and elaborate work against the Christians, who
paid it the compliment of destroying it with a thoroughness
which did not even spare the apologies of Eusebius, Apol-
linaris, Methodius, and Philostorgius, who had quoted Por-
phyry in attempting to answer him. " The Old Man of Tyre,"
as he was nicknamed, is known to have put these three puz-
zling questions : 1. If Jesus is the only way of salvation what
has become of the people who have not heard of him ? 2.
If the Old Testament is inspired why do not the Christians
offer sacrifices ? 3. If it is measured to us according to the
measure with which we mete to others, how can any one of us
be punished everlastingly ? Among other biblical defects he
pointed out the inconsistency of the quarrel between Peter and
Paul, described in Gralatians, chapter ii., with their infalli-

104 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [270

bility, and the culpability, not only of Peter in denouncing the
fatal curse on Ananias, and then on Sapphira, but even of
Jesus in telling his brothers he should not attend the Feast of
Tabernacles, and then going up to it in secret. (John vii., 8r
14. The former of these verses inserts "yet" without suffi-
cient authority.) Not until the present century did students
of the Bible see the great value of the discovery made by
Porphyry, when in view of such facts as the improbability of
King Nebuchadnezzar's falling on his face and worshiping a
Jew, or of any prophet's predicting a long series of unimport-
ant events in pagan history, closing arbitrarily with the year
167, B.C., he suggested that what is still called the JBook of
Daniel was not written by this author, nor in his time, but
about four hundred years later, and at the date just given, by
some zealous plotter against Antiochus Epiphanes. Thi&
monarch's ferocious attempt to root out the religion of the
Hebrews, provoked one of them to forge a picturesque ro-
mance, describing the vengeance of the Lord upon idolatrous
tyrants in the past, and announcing the speedy restoration of
the Hebrew monarchy. This fiction was published under the
honored name of Daniel ; and thus was ushered in that great
rebellion of the Maccabees, which saved Judaism from perish-
ing before the birth of Christianity. It is for making this dis-
covery that Jerome calls Porphyry a mad dog, but all impar-
tial scholars now act nowledge its value.

Among the instructors of this great critic was Longinus,
who adhered more closely to Plato's real meaning than did
the other members of this school, and who wrote the famous
treatise On the Sublime, in which he declared that genius can
not develop itself properly, except in an age of freedom.
" Whence it follows that we who can not drink of Liberty,
the source of all that is beautiful and noble, can be nothing
better than pompous flatterers." But this philosopher is best
known as the teacher and prime-minister of Zenobia, who was
by birth an Arab, in education a Greek, in ambition a Roman,
in morality a saint, and by nature, as well as fortune, an em-
press. Her wisdom and energy helped her husband, Odena-
thus, to become king of Palmyra, wage war successfully with

270] THE ALEXANDRIANS AND THEIR PUPILS. 105

the Persians, and force the Roman emperor to acknowledge
him as a colleague. She was left a widow in A.D. 267, but
maintained herself as an independent sovereign for seven
years, during which she conquered Egypt and Armenia, so
that her kingdom extended from the Euphrates to the Sahara,
and from the Red Sea to the Euxine. Under her sway
pagans, Jews, and Christians of every sect enjoyed such
equality before the law as they found nowhere else, and Pal-
myra became the center of Asiatic commerce, as well as the
home of literature, philosophy, and art. Zenobia is said to
have compiled a history of Egypt, Syria, and Arabia for her
own use. Her favorite amusement was hunting lions, and she
usually traveled on horseback, though she sometimes walked
mile after mile at the head of her troops. Then she wore a
helmet, but her state dress was a diadem and a purple robe
trimmed with jewels. Her voice was clear and manly, her
complexion dark, her eyes of uncommon luster, her teeth
so white as to be like pearls, and her beauty of form and
feature as faultless as her reputation. It was only after two
fierce battles and a stubborn siege, that she was overcome by
the emperor Aurelian, who saved her from the fury of his-
soldiers in reward for her protecting the empire against the
Persians, as he declares in a letter to the senate, where he
praises her generosity, timely severity, prudence, courage and
constancy. This letter is preserved by a contemporary, Tre-
bellius Pollio, and is a sufficient answer to the charge, made
nearly two centuries after her capture by Zosimus, and
repeated by Gibbon, to the effect that sho threw the blame of
resisting Rome on Longinus and other counselors, who were
beheaded accordingly. No such cowardice is consistent with
the statements either of Trebellius or of his literary partner,
Vopiscus. Both relate that Aurelian led her through Rome
in triumph, loaded with golden chains, but spared her life, con-
trary to almost universal usage. So little is recorded of her
in history, that those who would have a full idea of her great-
ness must be referred to William Ware's romance, called
Zenobia, or Letters from Palmyra.

106 SUPPRESSION OF FEEE THOUGHT. [270

in.

Her life, like those of Porphyry and Origen, was passed in
the dark days of the Roman empire, which never recovered
from the ravages of war and pestihence under Marcus Aure-
lius. The Northern barbarians, against whom he battled until
his death, continued to make invasions into Gaul, Italy, Spain,
Africa and Greece during the next three centuries, and in the
year 476 put a violent end to the Western empire. Their
ravages were assisted by a disastrous succession of civil wars
and bloody revolutions. Of twenty-nine emperors who reigned
during the century preceding the accession of Diocletian,
284, twenty-four were murdered by their own subjects, a
twenty-fifth was slain in a battle won by the Goths, still
another sovereign perished wretchedly in Persian captivity,
and some fifty pretenders to the throne met with violent deaths,
mostly through assassination, as was the case with many of the
comparatively legitimate sovereigns. The frequency of this
crime arose from the fact that an absolute monarchy is the
only government in which a revolution can be caused by one
man's death, as it is. also the one in which such a change can
usually be effected in no other way. Thus nothing is more
unstable in politics than a despotism, as nothing is now found
to be firmer than a republic. The Roman regicides were
peculiarly disastrous because they often involved bloody bat-
tles or massacres, and always led to extravagant largesses to
the army. Septimius Severus promised $2,000 to every soldier
who helped him dethrone the Julian who had bought the
empire by paying one-half of that sum to each of the 20,000
praetorian guards. Even a peaceable accession required
similar gifts, and this custom with the extravagance of despots
suddenly raised out of penury, the destructive Gothic and
Parthian inroads, and the excessive taxation carried on under
«ven the best sovereigns, greatly weakened the financial
strength of the empire, which, so early as the reign of Mar-
cus Aurelius, was scarcely equal to carrying on a long war,
•despite the full treasury left by Antoninus Pius, and the

270] THE DECLINE OF THE EMPIRE. 107

forty-four years of peaceful prosperity enjoyed under him and
Hadrian.

This pecuniary weakness must have been greatly increased
by the general incapacity of pagan and early Christian authors
to understand the real value of the arts of peace, or of what
may be called the business virtues, such as industry, economy,
prudence, foresight, and enterprise. Plato's Republic was
based on the degradation of farmers and mechanics as men of
brass and iron, while soldiers and politicians were formed out of
silver and gold ; and the almost forgotten assertion of Posidon-
ius, that some of the great philosophers had been mechanical
inventors, provoked Seneca to devote his 90th Epistle to pro-
testing indignantly that philosophy was far above any thing of
the sort. It was particularly unfortunate that the Gospels
forbade taking thought for the morrow, commanded the virtu-
ous rich man, who would be perfect, to give away all his prop-
erty, placed the enthusiastic Mary above the industrious Mar-
tha, sent Lazarus to heaven because he was poor, and Dives,
who evidently loved his brothers, to hell because he had been
rich, and represented Jesus as saying : " Blessed be ye poor ;
for yours is the kingdom of God." " But woe unto you that
are rich ; for ye have received your consolation." " It is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for
a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God ! " These pre-
cepts were accepted as literally as possible by the early church ;
and even Clement of Alexandria appears void of compre-
hension of the moral value of wealth and civilization. Lac-
tantius condemns traveling in order to carry on business ; and
the loan of money on interest is absolutely prohibited by him,
as well as by Cyprian, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, Augus-
tine, and other Fathers, who thought themselves fully justi-
fied by many passages in the Old Testament. (See Levit. xxv.,
36 ; Deut. xxiii., 19, 20 ; Psalms xv., 5 ; Prov. xxviii., 8 ; JEz.
xviii., 8, 13, 17). This indifference to business interests
was a necessary result of the higher honor given to
the next world than to this by all the early Christians, whose
impractical tendencies were further encouraged by the prefer-
ence of celibacy to matrimony shown even in Paul's First

108 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [270

Epistle to the Corinthians, (vii., 32-5) and very prominent in
the writings of Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Cyp-
rian, Ambrose, Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine. One of
the most unfortunate consequences of this disparagement of
social and family ties was the sudden development of the
fondness for the life of a hermit to such strength, that it is
said to have carried away half of the adults in Egypt before
the fourth century, during which it became popular in Italy,
Spain, and Gaul. The Christian Fathers, especially Jerome,,
do their utmost to extol recreants to all duties and decencies,
like Simeon Stylites, of whom Tennyson gives far too favor-
able a picture, the full story being, that the monster's father
died of grief at his flight from his family, and that, when his
mother came to visit him after twenty-seven years of separa-
tion, he kept her weeping and praying for liberty to see him,
until she too was murdered by his cruelty. Even as early as
365, a. law to prevent the general desertion of civic and mili-
tary duties, in order to become monks, was issued by a Chris-
tian emperor, Valens, who made a vain attempt in 376 to force
some of the Egyptian hermits to serve in his army. Nothing
did more than monasticism to increase that lack of brave sol
diers which was the most fatal weakness of the empire, and
which was made much worse, even as early as the third cen-
tury, by the literal acceptance of the New Testament doctrine
of non-resistance by most Christians, in the first three centu-
ries, and by their vigorously condemning all service in the army
and use of weapons, even in self-defense.

Rome had ceased, however, to make conquests long before
she became Christian, and her victorious career closed soon
after the fall of the republic. Carthage, Spain, Greece, Asia
Minor, Armenia, Syria, Numidia, and Gaul had all been sub-
dued during the hundred years preceding the crossing of the
Rubicon. The first century after the establishment of the
empire saw its boundaries nowhere enlarged, except in the
tardy subjugation of portions of Britain and Germany by
soldiers who won no victory which could offset the shame of
the defeat inflicted by Arminius. No rapid conquest of im-
portance was made by any emperor but Trajan ; his successor,.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 109

Hadrian, thought that more territory had been overrun than
could be held securely ; and Antoninus Pius would not even
permit a foreign nation to annex itself to the empire vol-
untarily. Such fears could scarcely have arisen during the
republic ; but they were justified by the difficulty which
Marcus Aurelius had in defending his territories against
enemies who ultimately proved irresistible. That the em-
pire should gradually cease to be formidable in war
was inevitable from the nature of its government. Discipline
can not long be kept up among troops which have to be coaxed
and bribed into fidelity to one despot after another. An
army which is managed mainly with a view to suppressing
domestic disloyalty, can not meet foreign enemies as vigor-
ously as if conquest were its only purpose. Officers who
expect promotion according to their servility to wicked and
capricious tyrants, are not likely to develop as much skill
and courage, as if these qualities were the chief requisites.
And generals will not be so apt to win victory, if it exposes
them, like Germanicus, to death under the jealous suspicions
of their sovereign, as if it were sure to raise them to the
highest honors in a free country. So strong was this ten-
dency to military degeneracy, that the strongest emperors
could only check it temporarily, and the weak ones suffered it
to increase with terrible rapidity. Thus it was not Christian-
ity, or infidelity, or luxury, that ruined Rome,- but simply
tyranny, which must always, sooner or later, work out its own
doom. Non-resistance and passive obedience might, ere long,
have been disregarded as completely by the ancient Chris-
tians, as by any modern ones, if imperialism had not favored
similar views of politics to its own destruction.

IV.

This necessary weakness of the empire caused the failure of
the attempts to suppress Christianity by continuous and sim-
ultaneous persecutions in all the large cities, as was first
essayed by Decius and his three successors in the middle of
the third century, when Origen and Cyprian perished, and

110 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THO UGHT. [303

many apostasies took place. After more than forty years of
toleration, the second and last of these general persecutions
began under Diocletian and his colleagues in 303. Churches
were pulled down, Bibles destroyed, and leading clergymen
burned alive. Nearly a hundred executions took place in
Palestine, a fact from which Gibbon estimates the total num-
ber of martyrs at this time at about 2,000. Britain, Gaul,
and Spain, suffered but little, being under the rule of the
father of Constantine. In Northern Africa the persecution
was severe enough to produce so many apostates, that the
question, how they ought to be treated, brought about tha
bloody secession of the Donatists. These fanatics, to whom
we owe the first attempt to abolish slavery and establish
political equality, waged war against their fellow Christians
with a ferocity which they tried to justify by the examples of
Moses and Elijah, and which continued amid frightful carnage
and shameful outrages on women, until Africa passed under
the more tolerant rule of Islam. In this region, as well as in
Italy, the persecution lasted but two years ; but it was kept
up for eight in all the Eastern provinces.

Toleration had been for some years practiced in most parts
of the empire, when it was legally established in 313 by the
Edict of Milan, in which the right of each individual to fol-
low whatever religion he chose was formally guaranteed by
Constantine and Licinius. The former now made Christianity
the state-religion in the Western provinces, as he did in the
Eastern also ten years later, when he became sole emperor.
Churches were exempted from taxation, clergymen endowed
with special privileges, baptism encouraged by presents from
the emperor, the observance of Sunday prescribed, Constanti-
nople dedicated to the Mother of Jesus, the first general coun-
cil held under the emperor's personal superintendence, and
the cross set up as the most sacred standard of the Roman
army. This emblem was thus honored, because Constantine
declared, as Eusebius says he heard from the royal lips, that
he saw it just before the battle which made him emperor,
blazing in the noonday sky, and surrounded with the inscrip-
tion, " Conquer by this." The story is sufficiently discredited

325] THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. Ill

by the fact that this crafty and bloody despot cared so little
for Christianity, as to hold the office of Pontif ex Maximus, or
chief-priest of paganism, all his life, to have the ancient aus-
pices consulted whenever government buildings were struck by
lightning, to permit the gods to be honored by such sacrifices
as had no treasonable or licentious tendencies, to stamp the
emblems of Apollo on his coins, to put Sospater to death on a
charge of invoking the wrath of Jupiter and Neptune against
the state, and to delay his own baptism until he was at the
point of death. There is nothing improbable in the story,
that his final preference for Christianity was greatly strength-
ened by finding that this was the only religion which could
promise him a free pardon for the wanton murder of his wife,
as well as of the gallant son who had but just won the naval
victory which gave the father the entire empire.

One of the most remarkable circumstances about these
atrocities, is that they took place the year after Constantine's
presiding over the great Council of Nicsea ; where he had
done much to repress the mutual animosity of the bishops.
Such was the source from which arose the most ancient of
Christian creeds ; for that ascribed to the apostles was not
drawn up until ten years afterwards, as that attributed to
Athanasius was not until five centuries later, some 450
years after the death of its pretended author. Of the
original Nicene creed the most important clause is that
declaring the Son " of one substance with the Father ; "
for this is the assertion of what was henceforth called
Homoousianism against the heresy of Arius. The efforts
to pay Jesus the highest possible honor, had resulted in a dis-
pute whether the Father and Son have the same nature, and
are equally eternal. Arius, while anxious to remain a Trini-
tarian, was yet desirous to make more difference between the
incomprehensible persons than seemed orthodox to Athan-
asius. Both antagonists belonged to Alexandria, from which
city the controversy spread all over the Eastern provinces,
where the two parties were equally strong. In Italy and other
parts of the West there was but little Arianism before these
countries were conquered by the barbarians. Such is the gen-

112 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [337

eral character of a dispute, which it is very difficult to relate
Accurately, and utterly impossible to decide intelligently, and
which derives its importance solely from the bigotry with
which various shades of blind belief were advocated by hostile
zealots. Constantine's good sense enabled him to condemn
the whole controversy for a while as trivial, but being at last
obliged to take sides, he did so at Nicaea with the Homoousians,
banished Arius and his leading supporters, and had their writ-
ings burned. Just before the death of the emperor, however,
he changed his party, recalled Arius, banished Athanasius,
and took his own baptism from one of the bishops whom he
had banished for disbelief in consubstantiality. Neither this
lapse, nor his many murders, prevented him from being
made a saint by the Greek Church, but there can be scarcely
any just praise, despite his ability in war and government, for
the tyrant who made persecution a permanent article of the
Christian code, and who destroyed the last relics of political
liberty by fixing the seat of government at Constantinople, and
making appointments to office proceed solely from the crown.
Constantine's example of tyranny and intolerance was fol-
lowed with increased atrocity by his son, Constantius, who be-
gan his reign by slaughtering his relatives, sent many of his
subjects to execution on suspicion of treason, never suffered
any one so accused to escape, drove Athanasius out of Alex-
andria by sending soldiers into the cathedral to kill and ravish
the worshipers, forced Pope Liberius and other leading sup-
porters of the Nicene creed to recant by his cruelties, ordered
churches demolished and many Christian villages depopulated,
had the bishop of Constantinople slain in order to install an
Arian successor, and for this end carried on a bloody contest,
in which 3,000 so-called Christians perished by each other's
hands — a larger number than had been put to death by any
pagan persecutor. So furiously did other Arians imitate their
sovereign and the Athanasians oppose him, that one of the
Church Fathers, Gregory of Kazianzen, declared that the
kingdom of heaven had already become a hell on earth: Both
parties vied in destroying the temples of the gods, and sacri-
fice had now become a capital crime.

361] THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 113

The violent destruction of the old religion was delayed only
by the elevation to the throne, in 361, of the brave, learned,
virtuous, and zealous Julian, who had already secretly aban-
doned Christianity, in which he was brought up, and for
which he was compelled to feign such attachment as to suffer
his name to be appended to one of the sanguinary edicts
against the worshipers of his own gods. His efforts while
emperor to have the Sun adored as the supreme deity, to
which all others should be subordinated, might, perhaps, a
century earlier, have united the various forms of European,
Asiatic, and Egyptian polytheism into a universal and perma-
nent religion. But the preservation of the old faiths from
destruction could not have been accomplished in Julian's day,
except during a long and peaceful reign ; and the rash attack
on Persia, which cost him his life after only eighteen months
of rule, made restoring paganism impossible ; while his propa-
gandism brought about the failure of his great military
scheme by disuniting his subjects, and offending his most
valuable ally, Armenia, which had but just made itself Chris-
tian through a civil war. Something was done by him for
toleration, but much less than he might have accomplished,
even in his brief sway, if he had been wiser and more con-
sistent. He recalled all the banished bishops, had the demol-
ished churches, temples, and synagogues rebuilt, commanded
that believers in all religions should be accounted equal before
the laws, and forbade that any Christians should be compelled
to sacrifice. But he gave the heathen priests privileges which,
although not greater than those granted by his Christian pre-
decessors to their own favorites, were yet incompatible with
religious equality ; obliged his soldiers to offer incense to the
gods in order to receive the customary gifts, sent Athanasius
again into exile, out of jealousy at his influence in Alexandria,
forbade the use of classic literature to all school-teachers who
despised the faith there taught — a singularly short-sighted
and unjust measure, severely condemned by one of his own
pagan soldiers, the historian Ammianus — suffered capital pun-
ishment and torture to be inflicted for insults to idols, and
permitted ecclesiastics to be murdered with impunity by mobs.

114 8 UPPRESSION OF FREE THO UGHT. [362

This was the fate of the Arian archbishop of Alexandria,
who had been guilty of such peculation and persecution
as to be entitled to but little sympathy, but who
is supposed to have been afterward transformed into
the patron saint of England, and one of the Seven Cham-
pions of Christendom. Julian's conduct in these respects,
as well as his requiring all teachers to obtain permission
from the crown, forbidding pagan priests to read Pyr-
rhonist or Epicurean books, and expressing delight that the
gods were destroying all such literature, compel the censure
that he did not understand the rights of free thought. How
could any one who had been brought up in the Church of the
fourth century ! He certainly was one of the most kind-
hearted, public-spirited, courageous, chaste, just, studious, and
conscientious of sovereigns, as well as an able general and
author, so far as can be judged from such of his writings as
have been spared by ecclesiastical bigotry.

Of his great work in fifteen books against Christianity, we
have only such fragments as are contained in the reply at-
tempted by Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, who had much
to do with the murder of Hypatia. Julian's main point is-
that the Christians took what was worst in both Judaism and
paganism, and left all that was best ; for instance, that they
united the Hebrew intolerance and belief in a jealous and
angry God, who forbade Adam and Eve to acquire knowledge,
with such readiness to worship the dead as was found only
among the lowest heathens ; while they gave up sacrifices
which were an essential part of all the old religions, were
sanctioned by the preference of Abel's offering to Cain's, and
were repeatedly enjoined in that law which Jesus pronounced
eternal. He also shows how contrary is the claim that the
Jews were a chosen people to the fact of their inferiority to
other nations in power, liberty, prosperity, and genius, whether
for war, literature, or the arts ; blames Paul for sometimes
asserting and sometimes denying the superiority of the
Hebrews, and changing shape like a polyp on a rock ; points
out the discrepancy of the Gospel genealogies, calls Peter a
phyocrite for the inconsistency condemned by the Epistle to

363] THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 115

the Galatians, extols Plato's account of the creation, in the-
Timceus, as nobler than that in Genesis • asks why, if knowl-
edge of Jesus is necessary for salvation, he did not reveal him-
self at once to all the nations ; as well as why Jehovah, if he-
really hated idolatry, took no pains to prevent it outside of
Palestine ; declares that the classic literature is morally su-
perior to the Jewish and Christian books ; and blames Paul
for asserting, (1 Cor. vi., 11), that those of his converts who
had been thieves and adulterers were sanctified by baptism.
This immoral doctrine, which is taught in Acts ii., 38, and xxii.,
16, as well as in the less authentic Mark xvi., 16, is justly re-
buked at the close of Julian's Ccesars.

That interesting satire represents the emperors as meeting
the gods at a banquet from which Nero and Caligula are hurled
into Tartarus, and undergoing a judgment which ends in giv-
ing the prize for greatness to Marcus Aurelius, despite the com-
petition of Alexander, Julius Csesar, Augustus, Trajan, and
Constantine, the last of whom claims the protection of the
Son, who says : "Let all boldly advance, whether they be lib-
ertines or murderers or whatever may be their crimes, for by
washing them with water I will immediately make them pure.
And if they should relapse they need only smite their breasts
and beat their heads and they will become pure again."

Julian's neglect to appoint a successor left the crown to fall
to the faint-hearted Jovian, who made a disgraceful peace with
Persia, and restored Christianity to supremacy as the state
religion, but did not persecute paganism. Neither did the
colleagues, Valens and Valentinian, except that their jealousy
of treason caused the death of many leading pagans, accused
of consulting the gods to find out who should be the next em-
peror. One youth perished merely for making a copy of a
book of incantations ; and many libraries were committed to-
the flames, because the owners feared that something treason-
able might be found therein. Valens, who became emperor
of the East in less than a year after Julian's death, was such
a zealous Arian that he sent Athanasius for a fifth time into-
exile ; so he did other leading ecclesiastics of whom he had
eighty burned to death in one ship, according to Catholic his-

116 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [380

torians, who blame greatly his violent attempt to force the
Egyptian monks to help him fight against the Goths, in resist-
ing which invasion he perished. More efficient protection
against these conquerors was found in the conversions now ex-
tensively carried on by the Arian missionaries. Among their
proselytes was Ulfilas, who has left us the oldest book in any
Germanic language, namely, his translation into Gothic of
the Bible, from which he omitted the books of Samuel and
Kings, which he knew would only make his countrymen more
ferocious.

Theodosius, who reigned from 379 to 395, though with
greater power over the Eastern than the Western provinces,
gave orthodoxy the supremacy by almost entirely suppressing
paganism, as well as Arianism and other heresies. His laws
made the sacrifice of animals a capital crime, and even the
offering of incense punishable by confiscation of the place so
desecrated. All the temples were closed, and many demol-
ished ; this destruction, which had been going on with'more or
less opposition from the government for half a century, being
now officially encouraged. Martin, bishop of Tours, took the
lead in this work in the West, as in the East did the Alexan-
drian patriarch, Theophilus, whom we must blame for destroy-
ing what remained of his city's famous library. Porphyry's
works were burned by Theodosius and his two colleagues, one
of whom, Gratian, took away the altar to Victory from the
Roman senate, and refused the title borne by all previous sov-
ereigns of Italy, of Pontifex Maximus. The old faith now
passed away rapidly in the large cities, though it lingered for
centuries in the country regions, a circumstance to which we
owe the names, heathenism and paganism.

On February 23, 380, all the subjects of the three emperors
were commanded to believe in the pole deity of Father, Son?
and Holy Ghost, and to hold the faith taught by the Apostle
Peter, and preserved by Pope Damasus, who had won his
election at the head of such a furious mob of charioteers and
gladiators, that 137 dead bodies were found together in a
single church, and whose relations with the Roman ladies were
scandalous. Similar bloodshed accompanied the suppression

385] THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY. 117

of Arianism in Constantinople and the other Eastern cities,
the West being still almost entirely orthodox. To the faith
embodied in Damasus, submission was enforced by fifteen
edicts, which made nonconformity a disqualification for hold-
ing office, and bequeathing or receiving legacies, forbade
giving or accepting heretical ordination under penalty of a
fine of $2,000, declared all real estate where heterodox wor-
ship was offered forfeited to the crown, deprived apostates
from orthodoxy of the right to testify, prohibited public
disputations about theology, commanded that Arian books be
destroyed, ordered the banishment of heretics from the cities,
and even threatened capital punishment against some pecu-
liarly obnoxious Quarto-decimans, Eunomians, and Mani-
cha3ans. The first of the sects menaced by this penalty,
which does not appear to have been then actually inflicted,
did not celebrate Easter uniformly on Sunday, or the crucifixion
on Friday, but kept the Last Supper on the day of the passover,
the 14th of the Hebrew month Nisan, as had been done by
many of the first Christians, especially the Apostle John, a
fact hard to reconcile with his having written the Fourth Gos-
pel, which differs from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in
placing the farewell feast with the disciples on the day before
the Jewish festival. The heretics next mentioned were named
after Eunomius, an Arian, who taught that no doctrine is true
which can not be clearly understood.

The third view was not so much a heresy, as a new religion,
which was founded soon after the middle of the third century
in Persia, by Manes, who united Zoroastrian, Gnostic, and Bud-
dhist doctrines and practices into a peculiar system of belief
and worship, which made its way rapidly in all directions,
gaining great popularity through the skill with which it
adapted itself to other religions, and the boldness with which
it called upon all men to disregard the terrors of authority,
and believe nothing until the truth should be sifted out. It
was this rationalism which for nine years fascinated Augus-
tine, as it did the Spanish bishop, Priscillian, who in 385 was
tortured and beheaded with six of his followers, one of them
a woman, at Treves, by the usurper, Maximus, who was urged

118 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THO UGIIT. [385

to persecution by several bishops. This was the first public
judicial murder for differences in belief in any Christian coun-
try, and the last for several centuries, owing partly to the
promptness with which it was condemned by Ambrose, Martin
of Tours, and other high authorities, partly to the exemption of
the class most interested in theology from secular jurisdiction,
partly to the rapid decline of mental activity, and partly to
the power soon gained by Moslem and heterodox invaders.
Vandal kings, however, joined with orthodox emperors and
popes in checking Manichaeism, though it was impossible to
suppress wholly the influence of its faith in the rights of
reason, the equality of the principles of good and evil, the
purification through transmigration of souls not fitted for
immediate entrance into heaven or hell, the worship of the
Sun as the symbol of Christ, the unreality of the great teach-
er's earthly life and death, the manifestation of the promised
Comforter in Manes, and the virtue of abstinence from animal
food as well as from marriage.

On the latter point there now arose a great difference be-
tween Western and Eastern Christians. Even since the Coun-
cil of Nicaea the Greek, Russian, Asiatic, Egyptian, and Abys-
sinian priests have been allowed to retain wives, taken before
ordination, though not to marry afterwards, wedding a second
wife being prohibited, and complete celibacy exacted of all
monks and bishops. There is no better instance of how much
good may sometimes be done by one man who knows the time
to speak, than is the fact that the utter prohibition of marriage
to all the clergy was prevented by the eloquence of Paphnu-
tius, an aged Egyptian bishop, who had never touched a
woman, and who had been maimed and blinded in one eye for
the constancy with which he confessed Christ under Diocle-
tian. And to the fanatical aversion of Jerome and Ambrose
to matrimony was largely due the professed acceptance by the
whole Latin Church of the decree in favor of priestly celibacy,
issued by Pope Siricius in 385. Little could be done by such
measures to keep the priests, bishops, and popes chaste, as we
shall see, but much was done to make them work together for
supremacy.

400] TRIUMPH OF BIGOTRY. 119

v.

The fourth century brought the long war between church
and empire to a close, and let those two enemies of liberty
reign together. Philosophy was fading away, and Ambrose
declared that Christians should have nothing to do with it, while
Jerome called it the third plague of Egypt, that of the lice.
There were no famous authors except a few partisans of ortho-
doxy, soon to pass away without leaving able successors. Edu-
cation had come so fully under state control that the laws of
Valentinian prevented any student from coming to Rome, then
the chief seat of Western culture, without special permission
from the police, or continuing there after he passed the age of
twenty. The few secular schools were thinly attended, and
little favored by the authorities. Clerical seminaries were
ruled by a narrow bigotry which forbade even bishops to read
the classics for any purpose, or heretical works except in order
to answer them, and which accepted as a divine revelation the
dream of Jerome, that he was punished for his fondness for
Cicero by being told, before the throne of God, that he was
not a Christian but a Ciceronian, and severely scourged by
the angels. Science had long ago ceased to make discoveries.
Free thought had thus been more completely suppressed than
at any time in the previous one thousand years. The results
of this suppression may be seen in the failure of Greek litera-
ture, during the fifteen centuries which have since elapsed, to
produce a single author equal to hundreds who had already
become famous. Athens, Alexandria, and Constantinople still
had their students and writers, but they have produced noth-
ing of much value or interest. Any single year in the age of
Pericles is worth more to us than all these fifteen hundred, so
far as Greek literature is concerned. We should not have
been able to say any thing more for Western than for Eastern
authors, if a new power had not now shown its might first in
destroying the ancient civilization, and then in building our
modern ones on the eternal foundations of political liberty,
industrial prosperity, popular education, and religious toler-

120 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THO UGHT. [415

ance. That English, French, and German thought is worth
more than that of modern Greece, or Egypt, is mainly due to
the invasion of the Western empire by men of such energy
and independence that when their ignorance had been en-
lightened and their lawlessness duly controlled, they became
reformers, teachers, inventors, discoverers, and liberators.

These invaders were at first superstitious and illiterate, and
it is as much their fault as that of their Christian contempo-
raries that the suppression of the ancient religion and philoso-
phy was followed by the Dark Ages. Christianity found no
antagonist of any literary ability for centuries after the mur-
der of the eloquent, virtuous, and beautiful Hypatia by a
priest-led mob. Neither had this religion any great defenders
or expositors for six hundred years after the deaths of Jerome
and Augustine, who did much to prevent the birth of saints
and sages, by encouraging the monastic system, under which
the most virtuous and thoughtful men and women have been
forbidden to have children, and confined more closely than
modern criminals, as well as in prisons less favorable than ours
to bodily health or mental growth. We are too humane to resort,
even in checking crime, to such severity as has been employed
for many centuries in suppressing morality and learning in
the name of religion. Among the last glimmerings of liberal
thought in Christendom were the declarations of Jovinian and
Vigilantius, that marriage is as holy as virginity, that monks
are useless to the world, that relic-worship is idolatrous, and
that it is better to use property wisely and beneficially than
to give it away hastily. These views were generally con-
demned as heresies, and Jovinian is said to have been scourged
and banished by the emperor Honorius.

Exile was certainly decreed, and at the request of Augustine,
against the followers of a British monk, wLose name, Pelagius,
seems to be a translation of Marigena, the Latinized form of
Morgan. This saintly man had traveled from Great Britain
to Palestine, teaching such original ideas, as that man is nat-
urally capable of goodness, that no depravity has been inher-
ited from Adam, that children will not be lost because they have
not been baptized, and that salvation may be gained outside

415] TRIUMPH OF BIGOTRY. 121

the church, as well as without any special grace from God.
These teachings found much favor in the East, but were
finally condemned as Pelagianism ; and in the Latin Church
they could gain little hearing, owing to the universal preva-
lence of a rudimentary form of Calvinism, previously advo-
cated by Tertullian, and at that time powerfully supported by
Augustine, who was predisposed, not only by long adherence
to the Manichaean belief in the power of Evil, but by remorse
for his own wickedness until past thirty, to make the most of
such sayings as those ascribed to Jesus, " Without me ye can
do nothing." "No man can come to me, except the Father
which hath sent me draw him ; " and of Paul's frequent declar-
ations that " In me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good
thing." " We were by nature the children of wrath." "By
grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves ;
it is the gift of God." " In Adam all die," etc.

Thus was Augustine led to declare, in books which had
more influence over our ancestors than any others written for
more than a thousand years, that it was the fall of Adam
which brought sin and death into the world ; that all other
men have inherited such depravity as leads, unless super-
naturally checked, to wickedness and damnation ; and that
those only can be saved whom God has predestined to receive
his grace. These views agreed so well with the claim of the
Church to be the only path to heaven, that the British viper,
as Pelagius was called by a contemporary bishop, was soon
condemned as a heretic throughout the West. Pope Zosimus
took his side for a while, but soon yielded to Honorius and
Augustine. Eighteen Italian bishops of greater firmness were
deposed and banished, and one of them, Julian, wandered
through Christendom for thirty years, finding himself every
where rejected as an outlaw, but constantly asserting the
rights of reason against authority. Augustine maintained
that whatever the bishops called heresy should be no longer
examined, but be suppressed by the state ; that intolerance is
not only a right, but a duty; and that Christian princes ought ,
as much to punish heretics as robbers and murderers. His
most elaborate work, the City of God, declares that the

122 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [415

Church shows her benevolence by her terrible discipline of the
.heterodox. (Book xviii., sec. 51, vol. ii., p. 284 in Dod's
translation).

So in defending the punishment of the Donatists, now liable
to be put to death according to a law which he persuaded the
emperor to pass, and which, though he regretted its enforce-
ment, he felt sure was just, he says : " There is a righteous per-
secution which the Church of Christ inflicts upon the impious."
" Does brotherly love, because it fears the shortlived fires of
the furnace for a few, therefore abandon all to the eternal fires
of hell ? " (De Corrections Donatistarum, end ch. ii. and ch.
iii.) Heretics, he thinks, have no rights of property which
Christian princes ought to respect. Priscillian's views he cen-
sures, but not his murder. While doing more than any one
-else to establish belief in biblical infallibility, he showed that
persecution is sanctioned, not only by a great array of Old
Testament authorities, but by Paul in blinding Elymas, and
«ven by Jesus in saying, " Compel them to come in, that my
house may be filled." (Luke, xiv., 23, and Acts, xiii., 6-11.)

Thus was persecution sanctified, reason fettered, and hu-
man capacity discredited by a learned and saintly bishop,
whose influence over all the churches and sects has been
greater than that of any later theologian. No one has ex-
pounded the Bible more devoutly and conscientiously. No
one has done more to enslave our race.

VI.

These four chapters have been devoted almost exclusively
to classic literature and history. The first thinkers, who freed
themselves from bondage to supernatural authority, were the
Greek philosophers ; and much good work was done in explain-
ing natural phenomena rationally, before physical inquiries
were subordinated to the mentally stimulating, though practi-
cally unproductive, study of metaphysics. Athens was the
earliest persecutor, and to her own destruction. Memory of
the grandeur with which Socrates died, for urging the advant-
ages of such mental activity as takes nothing for granted,

415] SURVEY OF CLASSIC THOUGH

joined with the brilliancy of Plato's arguments
dom of inquiry a power which soon proved irresistibleT
totle supplied most effective weapons for the combat against
dogmatism, Pyrrho showed how much peace of mind is gained
by refusing to be carried away by any form of belief or dis-
belief, and Epicurus freed Ms friends from all fear of gods,
demons, or fates, by teaching how to account for every thing by
natural causes. The religions of Greece and Rome were so
much shaken by political changes as to fall an easy prey to
the arguments of the Skeptics and Epicureans, who were
greatly aided by the rapid development of science under the
patronage of the Ptolemies. The great poem of Lucretius
against religion expressed the sentiments of intelligent men
more generally at the time of its publication, B. c. 55, than
xjould have been the case before, or has ever been since. Sim-
ilar views were openly expressed by the head of the Roman
priesthood, Julius Ca3sar ; the literature of his age was deeply
marked by Epicureanism and Skepticism ; and the neglect of
temples and festivals showed that the common people had
found out how unworthy of reverence were the ancient gods.
The extinction of the national faith was delayed only by
the efforts of Augustus and his tyrannical successors to check
mental independence and encourage servile sentiments. Horace,
Virgil, Ovid, and Livy labored under imperial patronage to
make superstition impressive and attractive; but literary activ-
ity soon declined under the terror awakened by the punish-
ments frequently inflicted on authors. The appearance of
Christianity, during this reactionary age, made the restoration
of polytheism impossible, but did very little to encourage in-
tellectual activity, and nothing to save love of political liberty
from destruction. It was not freedom, but faith, that Jesus
preached. The great martyrs for constitutional liberty 'were
Stoics ; and free inquiry is as deeply honored in the Epistles
of Seneca, as is faith in those of his contemporaries, Paul and
Peter, who are also remarkable for opposing female emanci-
pation, then almost complete. The subjection of women to
men, citizens to sovereigns, laity to clergy, and reason to
faith, was insured by the organization of the Christian hie-

124 SUPPRESSION OF FREE THOUGHT. [415

rarchy ; and those early champions of liberty in the Church^
the Gnostics, were cast forth as heretics, at the very time that
. constitutional freedom, literary activity, and mental independ-
ence were revived by those philosophic emperors who reigned
nearly to the close of the second century, and while rational-
ism still retained a popularity evident in the impunity with
which Lucian made the gods ridiculous forever.

This chapter has shown how plainly the illiberal tendencies
of Christianity were manifested by Tertullian, who, while
protesting against persecution by pagans, denied that heretics
have any rights in the Church, or that there is any thing worth
learning by the orthodox. All his hatred of heretics did not
prevent his being classed among them, for favoring Montan-
ism, an ascetic form of Second Adventism, remarkable mainly
for letting women become prophetesses and bishops. Short
was the life of a more enlightened form of Christianity, which
appeared early in the third century at Alexandria, where
Clement did such justice, not only to pagan philosophy but to-
female capacity, as was wholly new in the Church, and where
Origen protested unsuccessfully against literal infallibility,,
endless misery, and other growing errors. The same school
of thought which tried vainly to liberalize Christianity, suc-
ceeded in debasing heathen philosophy into Neo-Platonism,.
which soon became notorious for inability to reason and
proneness to superstition, despite the eflPorts of a few excep-
tional adherents like Porphyry, who found out the real origin,
of the book still erroneously ascribed to Daniel. This system
is otherwise memorable chiefly for inspiring that most toler-
ant of sovereigns and bravest of women, Zenobia, that disin-
terested but inconsistent combatant against Christian bigotry,
Julian, wrongly called the Apostate, and that spotless martyr,
under the fury of a priest-led mob, Hypatia.

The more rationalistic forms of philosophy vanished before
the increase of such mental torpor as resulted necessarily,,
like financial and military weakness, from the pressure of im-
perialism, which was now showing its peculiar liability to civil
war. The servility and pusillanimity which caused the fall of
the empire increased rapidly with the growth of Christianity

47C] SURVEY OF CLASSIC THOUGHT. 125

to such power as soon proved fatal to intellectual activity and
liberty of thought. Vainly did the Manichaeans profess a
rationalism which was considered a capital crime in Bishop-
Priscillian and his adherents, the first Christians put to death
for their opinions under the sentence of Christian judges.
Useless were the efforts of Pelagius, Jovinian, and Vigilan-
tius, to teach faith in the natural capacity of man, and to
prevent monasticism from checking the transmission of virtue
and scholarship by inheritance. Prominent among the cham-
pions of this delusive system was Augustine, whose mighty
influence made intolerance supreme. Only the conquest of
the Western empire by illiterate barbarians was needed to
complete the extinction of independent thought.

CHAPTER V.

EARLY MEDIEVAL HEKESY.
I.

We pass almost beyond the influence of classic philosophy
as we enter the Middle Ages, the period in which free thought
appears only as heresy. Western Europe was so much dark-
ened by the ignorance of the barbarians, that nothing more
enlightened than their rude and transient Arianism disturbed
the Latin Church during the sixth and seventh centuries.
The East had still mental activity enough to cause differences
in belief ; and many heretics had been driven from the
Church, when a new sect, whose founder dared to leave her
fold of his own accord, arose about 660, and set up against
her authority the most liberal standard which could then win
followers, that of the New Testament. Its study led a zealous
Syrian, named Constantine, to establish in the valleys of the
Taurus the great sect of Paulicians, called so on account of
the peculiar honor paid to the Apostle to the Gentiles, and
noted for disregard of the authority of councils, patriarchs,
popes and fathers of the Church as well as for disuse of all
ecclesiastical sacraments and titles. They spoke of houses of
prayer instead of churches or temples. In place of bishops
or priests, they had teachers ; though for a while they were
ruled by a succession of prophets, who called themselves after
Paul's companions, Constantine having set the example by
taking the name of Sylvanus. There was little distinction
of rank among them ; but peculiar honor was given to the
preachers, as well as to the scribes, who kept busy in circula-
ting the Gospels and Pauline Epistles. Those of Peter were
rejected, as was the entire Old Testament, which was thought
to be inspired by a deity of such limited goodness and wis-
dom, that the so-called fall of man was really a step toward

660] RATIONALISTS BEFORE A. D. 1000.

emancipation. This belief, like the denial of the reality of
the birth and death of Jesus, and consequent refusal to honor
his mother or his cross, shows that the Paulicians were de-
scendants of the Gnostics, particularly the Marcionites, who
had been very numerous in Cappadocia and Pontus, where the
new sect continued to flourish until it was transported into
Europe. How far its adversaries were justified in calling it
by the hated name of Manichaean, it is hard to say. The
Paulicians apparently did not give more power to the evil
principle than had been conceded by Marcion, or accept the
writings of Manes as authorities, or disparage marriage, as
had been done by him, as well as by the Church Fathers. But
the admission of Manichseans as members could not but have
had great influence in a sect which cared more for purity of
life than of doctrine. The only charge against them which
seems to be sustained, is that of protecting themselves by
skillful equivocations from persecution. This, of course, came
speedily. The founder was stoned to death in 684, by dis-
ciples compelled to apostatize by an imperial official, named
Simeon, who was so deeply impressed by the heroism of the
leaders, as well as by the truth of their doctrines, that, after
striving to forget them in Constantinople, he went back
among the Paulicians, became ere long their prophet, under
the name of Titus, and was burned to death in 690, with other
members of his flock. During the next century the sect had
comparative peace, for Leo the Isaurian, who drove all the
Montanists into the Church, and most of the Jews out of the
empire, was born in the mountain home of Paulicianism, and
gave his main strength, as did his two successors, to enforcing
its prohibition of consecrated pictures and images. It was
not until after a long and bloody contest had ended in the
final defeat of iconoclasm that the Paulicians were driven,
by a persecution during which 100,000 martyrs perished, into
general revolt, in 845, against the emperor. Carbeas,
whose father had been impaled, became their leader, formed
alliances with the Arabs, fortified Tephrica in the mount-
ains near Armenia, and carried on a ferocious war, which did
not end until late in the tenth century, when the Paulicians were

128 EARL T MEDIEVAL HERESY. [850

permitted to emigrate to Bulgaria, and enjoy their views in
peace, on condition of defending the line of the Danube.
Some of them seem there to have passed on into a more for-
midable heresy, which ere long worked its way through Italy
and France into England ; but the sect as such makes little
further figure in history.

There is no instance of capital punishment for differences
of opinion between Christians in Western Europe after 385,
when Priscillian was beheaded, until 1000 A. D. ; but an Irish
bishop, named Clement, was deposed and imprisoned for life
in 744, for asserting his right to retain his wife, and rejecting
not only the authority of fathers and councils, but also the
doctrines of predestination and damnation of unbelievers.
Another Irish bishop, named Virgil, was temporarily sus-
pended about this time, for teaching the rotundity of the
earth. A century later a Saxon monk, named Gottschalk,
who had stated in private conversation that his faith in the
foreordination of the righteous to be saved led him to the in-
ference that the wicked were likewise predestined to be
damned, was put on trial before the German emperor, and
handed over to the archbishop of Rheims, whose synod sen-
tenced him to be whipped severely and imprisoned until he
should recant. This lie refused to do, and died in his dungeon
without the sacraments thought necessary to salvation, so
that he was buried in unconsecrated ground.

Such were the circumstances under which the cruel prelate,
Hincmar, asked the aid of the ablest Christian writer since
Augustine,* John Scotus Erigena.} This scholar, whose name
is supposed to show his Scottish family and Irish birth, was
teaching in Paris under the protection of King Charles the
Bald, to whom he is said to have replied, on being asked, as
they were drinking together, " What is there between a Scot
and a sot ? " "A table." Among his pupils was the young
prince, Alfred, who soon saved England from the Danes, and
became the founder of her literature and legislation. Eri-
gena's knowledge of Plato, Aristotle, the Neo-Platonists, and
the Greek Fathers, especially Origen, enabled him to show
that Gottschalk's view was unphilosophical, and to represent

850] RATIONALISTS BEFORE A. D. 1000. 129

God as the source of all goodness and of goodness only, evil
being merely an imperfect and negative state, destined grad-
ually to disappear, so that even the devils would ultimately
be saved, although every soul must suffer the natural conse-
quences so long as it should remain in sin and alienation from
heaven. His previous assertion, that the presence of Jesus in
the Lord's Sapper is purely spiritual, had stirred up little or
no opposition, but the eternity and materiality of hell were
very dear to the Church. Heresy might also be found in the
Erin-born philosopher's saying, that no attributes can
properly be given to God, since He is so far above all knowl-
edge, that ignorance is true wisdom, as well as in his attempt
to build up a whole system of philosophy and theology on the
basis of a definition of the Nameless One as Pure Reason,
and in his exaltation of the human reason as a manifestation
of the Divine. His great work, De Divisione Naturae, is full
of passages like these : " True philosophy and true theology
are identical." " Authority is derived from Reason, and not
JReason from authority." " All authority not acknowledged
by Reason is seen to be weak ; but true Reason rests on its
own strength and has no need of confirmation by any au-
thority." "We should not fear to declare the truth revealed
by Reason, even if it should seem contrary to the Bible " (De
Div., i. 66, 69). Nothing bolder was said in Christendom for
four centuries. No wonder that local councils were loud in cen-
sure, and that the pope asked to have the heretic sent to Rome ;
but the royal favor, together with the slowness of the medieval
Church in finding out much she really had to fear from Pan-
theism, enabled this forerunner of Bruno, Spinoza, and Emerson
to end his days in peace, and leave his works open to the
few scholars able to value them aright.

Bishop Claudius of Turin was not interfered with for op-
posing pilgrimages to Rome, and appeals to the pope, nor
Bishop Agobard of Lyons for writing against witchcraft and
ordeals. Rationalistic authors had too little influence, and
were too few in number, to cause much alarm. Most of what
little literary activity there was in Western Europe during
the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries was

130 EAELT MEDIEVAL HERESY. [850

employed in checking the lawless violence, and teaching
the gross ignorance of the barbarians ; and the ablest rulers,
like Justinian and Charlemagne, are especially famous for
their success in restoring order. This work would have been
much better done, if discord had not been kept active by the
cruel intolerance with which heretics, pagans and Jews were
treated by the medieval prelates and monarchs, who must
also be censured for general neglect to educate the people.
Charlemagne showed himself far above his contemporaries in
this respect, but his plans were not formed with sufficient
heed to the wishes of his people to acquire stability. The
strong tendency to consolidation of the hierarchy and suprem-
acy of the pope is, to some extent, due to popular need of
moral guidance ; but this would have been much better given
by the Church, if she had been less ready to connive at the
cruelty and sensuality of orthodox sovereigns, and to encour-
age pious frauds. The first half of the ninth century pro-
duced two notorious forgeries, that of what is still incor-
rectly called the Athanasian Creed, and that of the False
Decretals, a collection of documents, either wholly fictitious,
like that describing an imaginary grant of territorial sover-
eignty and royal privileges from Constantine to Pope Sylves-
ter I., the False Donation, or else having had the real dates
altered to earlier ones, the object being to place the pope
above the other bishops, and the clergy above the law. The
imposture was protested against as soon as it appeared, and
would have been easily detected by examining the papal ar-
chives ; but more than a hundred popes kept up the fraud, and
punished all who tried to expose it. Not until the fifteenth
century did truth become as precious to the Church as power.
While Christian history is remarkable mainly for pious
frauds and bloody persecutions of Jews and heretics, Moslem-
ism was founding the great universities, observatories, and
libraries of the age, and practicing more tolerance than was
ever permitted in medieval Christendom. Heretics and He-
brews gladly welcomed the radiance of the crescent in place
of the shadow of the cross. Seventy different forms of Is-
laniism were suffered to exist, and the Motazalites had the

1000] BERENQAR, ROSCELLIN, AND THE CATEAR18TS. 131

approval of most of the caliphs at Baghdad, in teaching
that there are no books of supernatural origin, that man is
the source of his own actions, and that all men are naturally
able to know what is true and right ; doctrines as hostile to
Christian as to Moslem orthodoxy. Despite occasional perse-
cution, these oriental free-thinkers were permitted to develop,
not only a school of philosophy like that of Plato and Eri-
gena at Bassorah, but a more materialistic one at Baghdad.
The poet, Abul Allah, was able to say, about 950 : " Mos-
lems, Jews, Christians, and Parsees are all in error." "There
are two kinds of men, those with intelligence but no faith,
and those with faith but no intelligence." It was during
this century that a Bactrian Jew, Chivi of Balkh, published
two hundred objections to the truth of the Old Testament ;
for instance, the absurdity of making God dwell in temples,
or take pleasure in sacrifices, and the probability that the
passage of the Red Sea and drowning of Pharaoh was due
to the ebb and flow of the tide, as well as that the manna
grew wild in the wilderness. Rationalism could not establish
itself permanently among Jews or Moslems, but popular edu-
cation flourished, and knowledge of the Koran and Hebrew
Bible became universal, while that of the New Testament was
restricted to the priests.

ii.

No execution for heresy, except that of Priscillian and
his followers in 385, is known to have taken place in Western
Christendom before the year 1000, when Bilgard, or Vilgard,
and his adherents were burned or beheaded by the bishop
of Ravenna for some unknown heresy, said to have been
taught to the leaders by the ghosts of Virgil, Juvenal, and
Horace. It is not improbable that this story was invented in
order to prevent further investigation, and that in origin and
nature this heresy resembled that which was soon after com-
mon in Italy and France. That very year, a pious peasant of
Champaigne, named Leutard, put away his wife, dashed to
pieces the crucifix in the village church, and began to preach

132 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1022

against matrimony, the Old Testament, and the priests.
Many followers joined him, but he, too, was arrested by his
bishop, to whom he declared that he had fallen asleep in the
fields, and heard a revelation from a swarm of bees. Then
Leutard drowned himself, probably to avoid being tortured
into confessing who his teacher really was. We shall see that
similar doctrines were soon spread over France by proselyters
from Italy, and it is probable that these early martyrs held
what was afterward known as the Catharist or Albigensian
heresy. m

Soon after a Norman knight was made suspicious by the
praises his chaplain, Heribert, gave to the piety and learning
of two canons at Orleans, Stephen and Lisoi. He pretended
a wish to be their pupil, and thus found that they were at the
head of a secret society, embracing most of the other canons,
many nuns, and other religious people, andholding clandestine
meetings, at which the authority of the Bible and the Church,
the truth of the Gospel history and the value of baptism and
the Lord's Supper were denied, and the ordinance of laying on
of hands, by unmarried and thoroughly unworldly men, ad-
ministered as a sign of acceptance with God. These ideas
had been brought by an Italian woman, who had also taught
what was kept a secret from all but the most advanced, namely
that in the Godhead there are two equal and co-eternal prin-
ciples, Good and Evil, the latter being the God of the Old
Testament as well as the Creator of the visible universe. When
the knightly spy had wormed out heresy enough, he sent for
his king, who had the whole society arrested at a nocturnal
gathering. The canons declared on their trial, that they could
believe nothing which is not in harmony with nature, and
finally exclaimed, " Put an end to us, and do what you will ;
for we see our King reigning in heaven, and ready to raise us
up to joy and triumph at his right hand." As Stephen was led
out of the cathedral, Queen Constance, whose confessor he had
been, smote him in the face with her cane, and struck out his
eye. He, Lisoi, and ten other canons were promptly burned
alive, as was Heribert, the chaplain. The others were put in
prison, where two or three recanted. Thus in 1022 was the

1031] BERENGAR, ROSCELLIN, AND THE CATHARISTS. 133

first Catharist congregation in France broken up, and this was
the first execution in that country of heretics whose names
have been preserved. The same heresy was also discovered,
but suppressed for the moment with little violence, at Toulouse,
Liege, and Arras, to the last of which cities it is known to
have been brought by an Italian. In 1031 a band of Catharists,
who had held out for weeks in the castle of Monteforte, near
Turin, against Archbishop Heribert, of Milan, were placed
with their leader, Gerard, in the market-place of that city to
choose between a crucifix and a blazing pyre. A few kneeled to
the Christ, but most of them covered their faces and rushed
into the flames. Germany, too, had her first martyrdom
within the Church in 1052, when some converts to this widely
spread heresy were hung at Goslar in Hanover. Such were
the first scenes of a persecution which raged during 300 years
in Italy, France, Germany, and Belgium, culminating, as we
shall see, in the Albigensian war, but not polluting England
before the middle of the twelfth century.

The Evil Principle had already been made prominent by
the Paulicians and Manichaeans ; but the new sect cared little
for Paul and nothing for Manes, whose most sacred symbol,
the Sun, was now classed among the works of Satan. The
Catharists may have received members from the Paulicians,
but they differed from them and resembled the Manichaeans,
not only in teaching transmigration and in condemning mar-
riage, meat, property, and resistance to violence, but as a nec-
essary result, in letting those converts who could not break
away from the world so thoroughly, form, a class distinct from
the Perfected, who observed all these pronibitions so strictly,
and fasted so rigorously, as often to be detected by their pal-
lor. These most advanced members also called themselves the
Pure, from which word in Greek, where it occurs in the
Beatitude, came the name of the sect. The same root is found
in Catharine / and the adoption of this title is said to cause
the Germans to call heretic, Ketzer. This use of a Greek
name, with that of translations of the New Testament made
directly from the original, and the ability to quote the Septu-
agint, favors the supposition that the sect arose in Eastern

134 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1050

Europe ; and we shall find its most influential teachers in
Bulgaria and Constantinople. Its origin and spread may be
ascribed to an ascetic horror at the notorious profligacy of all
classes, especially the clergy, which suggested the belief that
the Church, as well as the world, must be given up in order to
live in purity, and that both had fallen under the control of
Satan, then universally considered the author of evil.

Manichaeism had loved pompous ceremony, but the Cathar-
ists were remarkable, especially in Roman Catholic countries,
for the simplicity and intellectuality of their worship. No
altar, crucifix, or baptismal font was ever seen in their meet-
ings, where much time was given to the interpretation of the
New Testament by preachers educated with great care, for a
task which was made all the more difficult by the belief that the
narrative of the birth, miracles, death, resurrection, and ascen-
sion of Jesus had no literal truth, and must be explained sym-
bolically, as were all passages in favor of a material heaven, or
of the resurrection of the body. The Old Testament, with the
exception of the Psalms and the Prophets, was rejected sum-
marily. The most characteristic part of their public worship
was the joint request of all the less advanced members to the
Perfected, to pray for them, and the solemn petition offered
up accordingly. The communion was sometimes celebrated,
but only with bread, and this was not supposed to be the body
of Jesus. Baptism was never used, though that by the Holy
Ghost was said to be administered at the most private meet-
ings, when the neophyte, after due pledges of purity and fidelity
was received into the number of the Perfected by their laying
first their New Testament and then their hands upon his
head. Women might receive the Consolation, as this was called,
but might not administer it, except to the dying ; nor might
they preach. All bodily contact of believers of different sexes
was avoided with the utmost care, especially among the Per-
fected ; but this distinction would be abolished in heaven,
according to the Catharists, who were wholly at variance with
the Catholics in this view, as they were in such more import-
ant ones as that Jesus was simply the highest of the angels ;
that he saves us by teaching us how to save ourselves, not by

1050J BERENGAR, ROSCELLIN, AND THE CATHARISTS. 135

making any atonement or propitiation, and that the Good God
will finally receive every soul into heaven, except the few
which were created by the Evil One. One of these heretics de-
clared on his trial that if he thought God would not save
every soul He had made he would spit at Him. Differences
in belief were always settled amicably, the great object of the
sect being moral purity, for which it is praised by even its
persecutors — Bernard of Clairvaux, Hildebrand, and Innocent
III. The black-robed and pale-faced Catharist preacher, who
never touched a woman, or accepted any gift but the coarsest
food, or ate more than enough to support life, or owned any
property, had so much more right than the rosy, portly, and
gorgeously-dressed bishop, with his guards, his palace, his
banquets, and his concubines, to be called a successor of the
Apostles, that the heresy spread rapidly through Italy, where
its adherents were termed Paterines, after the Milanese priests
who labored for sacerdotal celibacy, into France where they
were called Weavers, after their most general occupation, and
Albigenses, after a -city where they were freed by the citizens
from the bishop's prison, in 1100.

Before following them beyond the eleventh century we
must look at its other rationalists. Perhaps this name does
not belong to William the Conqueror, who refused to let Hil-
debrand raise the Church above the State in England, or to
Henry IV., whose struggle against this pope's ambition cul-
minated in the famous humiliation at Canossa. There is no
doubt of the rationalism of Berengar, master of the cathedral
school at Tours, who was sent to prison unheard, for saying
in private letters that he could not believe that the communion
flesh and blood are miraculously transformed by the priests
into the real body and blood of Jesus. He was set free by
Ilildebrand, but had to make a formal recantation before a
synod at Rome, and burn not only his own writings but those
of his chief authority, Erigena. Subsequent expressions of
incredulity, for which he was more than once in danger of
murder by French mobs, caused him to be forbidden from
teaching, except to reclaim those whom he had led into error.

The time of the recantation at Rome, 1050, was that of the

136 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1050

composition by a Spanish Jew, Solomon Ibn Gebirol, of a
dialogue in Arabic which insisted on the innate capacity of
each man to raise himself to the highest knowledge and hap-
piness, with such boldness that it soon became widely known
in a Latin version, as Avicebron's Fons Vitce, and proved a
mighty leaven of independent speculation.

Shortly before the end of the century, a Breton logician,
named Roscellin, was daring enough to question the doctrine
of the reality of abstractions, then held by all Christendom,
but already a subject of eager controversy by Moslem philos-
ophers. Thus originated the dispute between Realists and
Nominalists, whose importance consists in the fact that all
theology is made up of abstractions. The power of the popes
and bishops rested on assumptions which must pass away as
soon as it could be proved that nothing really exists but indi-
vidual objects. Nor had the kings and emperors any title to
absolute power, which would not share the fate of other prod-
ucts of the imagination. Never did men understand how
able they were to think for themselves, until they discovered
that all knowledge could not be reached by reasoning from
the established definitions of the Absolute and Infinite. How
much there is to be learned from the world around us, could
never be found out by those whose thoughts were turned
mainly to the immaterial and supernatural. Thus the great
question has always been, shall we study realities or abstrac-
tions ? Hence Roscellin's opinion, which may at first seem
abstruse and trivial, was really an assertion in be-
half, not only of political and religious liberty, but
of practical and scientific modes of thought. The
question of the real or nominal existence of abstractions
became particularly important when it was found that the
founder of Nominalism, in denying that general ideas are more
than names, and that there is any existence except of individ-
uals, went so far as to assert that each of the three persons
in the Trinity is a distinct individuality, a view according to
which there are three Gods. He abjured at Soissons, in order
to escape lynching, and fled to England, where he wrote under
the protection of William Ruf us, whose open unbelief joined

1100] BERENGAR, ROSCELLIN, AND THE CATHARISTS. 137

with his unlimited power, in letting his singularly bad propen-
sities grow unchecked. Even royal favor did not prevent
Roscellin from becoming so unpopular in England, especially
for censuring the open licentiousness of the priests, that he
had to return to France, where he was scourged for heresy by
the canons, and where he had to die without the sacraments.

The struggle of Nominalism against Realism could not,
however, be put down, though the latter view had the power-
ful support of Anselm, author of a theory of the atonement
which soon became supreme, and is still orthodox. Hitherto-
Jesus had been thought to have ransomed man by cheating
the devil, a fancy singularly appropriate for a Church thriving
on pious fraud. The new doctrine, that salvation had been
bought by satisfying the wrath of an angry God, marks the
age when the Church became mighty enough to massacre her-
etics, to secure the servility of the priests at the cost of their
morality, by making them abandon their wives, and to create
those gigantic monsters of intolerance, the crusades, which
began with the murder of thousands of Hebrews on the Rhine,,
and culminated in the slaughter of almost the entire population
of Jerusalem, men, women, and children perishing indiscrim-
inately, while the blazing synagogues engulfed their peaceful
worshipers. These deeds were rewarded with such liberal
promises of heaven, as made the crusaders every where
dreaded for their licentiousness, which, with the impoverish-
ment of their wives and daughters, and the celibacy of the
clergy, caused professional prostitution to become scandal-
ously common in the twelfth century. How plainly the
Church had become the enemy of virtue, as well as of knowl-
ledge, is shown by the number of enemies which now rose up
against her.

The twelfth century found Italy so full of Catharist*
that half the houses in Rome were marked with their secret
sign of brotherhood. In Milan they were so popular, that the
archbishop could not stir up a persecution, though he preached
with a fury which caused him to die in his pulpit. This was
in 1173, when they were strong enough at Florence to control
the elections. Their activitv extended even into Calabria, but

138 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1100

was greatest in Lombard y. In 1159 they had spread to En-
gland, where a band of thirty fugitives from the Netherlands
was brought before Henry II., then struggling against Becket
for the supremacy of the law over the clergy, and sentenced
at Oxford to be branded in the forehead, scourged, and out-
lawed. No one dared shelter them, and all soon froze or
starved to death. Soon after some Gatharists were burned at
Cologne, where a girl, who had been spared on account of her
youth and beauty, pressed through the crowd, crying, " Show
me the master I honor." She saw him expiring in the flames,
tore herself from her friends, covered her face, and rushed in
to perish with him. A still more characteristic incident took
place near Rheims in 1170, when a priest found a young lady
walking by herself in the fields, and tried to seduce her. She
repelled him so indignantly that he recognized her as a Cathar-
ist, and had her burned accordingly. Many women are acknowl-
edged to have perished as heretics, merely because they were
too pure for the priests. Members of the sect were also exe-
cuted at Vezelay, near Sens, for instigating a rebellion of the
serfs against their abbot.

Their main strength was in Southern France, especially at
Toulouse and Albi. At Lombers, near the latter city, in 1165,
as well as at Toulouse in 1178, we see the strange spectacle of
•Catholic bishops and abbots forced to meet heretic preachers
in free discussion, and submit to being publicly denounced as
wolves in sheep's clothing, and whited sepulchers, while they
<;ould reply only by unheeded excommunications. The Cath-
arists even ventured to hold a public synod of their own, in
May 1167, at Saint-Felix de Caraman near Toulouse, the her-
etic bishop of Albi, two others from Northern Italy and
delegates from the Val D'Aran, then without a head, having
been invited by leading men in the dioceses of Toulouse and
Carcassonne, also bishopless, to meet Bishop Nicetas from
Constantinople, and assist in filling these vacancies, in settling
the boundary between the two provinces just mentioned, and
in deciding the merits of a new view which was as follows :

The Good God is supreme, but his elder son, Satanael, after
being expelled with his followers from heaven, where he had

1100] BERE3GAR, ROSCELLIN, AND THE CATHARISTS. 139

reigned as is described in the Parable of the Unjust /Stew-
ard, created the visible universe, including the bodies of Adam
and Eve, for whom he had to ask souls from his Father, who
sent them down from his own abode, with a charge to abstain
from all impurity. Satanael, after becoming the father of
Cain by Eve, tempted her and Adam into licentiousness by
which their souls remained tainted, as they passed from them
into their children. At last the younger son of God had to
assume the appearance of humanity, though not real flesh and
blood, in order to open the way by which all these souls will
ultimately be saved in company with the evil angels.

This view had appeared early in the century in Bulgaria,
and one of its prominent advocates, named Basil, was invited
to expound it in private to the Greek emperor, Alexius Corn-
menus, who, after persuading him to name his principal ad-
herents, drew aside a curtain, behind which were scribes who
had written down Basil's words, and guards who, on his refus-
ing to recant, dragged him to prison, from which he went to
the stake in company with many other Bogomiles, as they
were called, from the zeal with which they preached the
mercy of God in that merciless age.

The deliberations at Caraman were undisturbed, the ear-
lier view, of the equality of the Two Principles, being finally
adopted amicably, the new bishops ordained, and the Conso-
lation administered with great solemnity. In 1178 the pope
sent his legate, with a whole train of bishops and archbishops,
to overawe the heretics ; but the people of Albi all turned out
on donkeys, and received their visitors by beating tin pans, and
ringing hand-bells, and those of Toulouse pointed their fingers
at the ecclesiastics, crying, "The hypocrites!" "The real
heretics ! " Harsher measures were now thought necessary,
and in 1181 an army of crusaders, headed by Abbot Henry of
Clairvaux, one of the prelates insulted at Toulouse, invaded
the territory of Roger, viscount of Beziers, whose predecessor
had been assassinated in church for his zeal against heresy,
but whose own sympathies are shown by his having thrown
the Romish bishop of Albi into prison, and paid great honor
to the leading Albigensian preachers. Those bishops who

140 EARL T MED1EVA L JJERLST. [1125

held the sees of Toulouse and Val D'Aran were now captured
and forced to recant, as Roger himself did, after a devastating
war, soon to be succeeded by one far more terrible.

Council after council had now thundered against the Albi-
gensians, Catharists, and Paterines ; all the bishops were ex-
horted again and again to hunt them down ; and Innocent III.,
greatest of all the popes, partly through his own ability and
partly through the weakness of the contemporary monarchs,
began his mighty reign in 1198, by sending into Southern
France such a special commission as may be called the origin
of the Inquisition. Nothing occurred in the twelfth century,,
however, which prevented the Catharists, at its close, from
gaining such an ascendency in Southern France and North-
ern Italy, that they seemed likely to liberate all Europe from
the Church, against whom other assailants had meantime
organized themselves.

in.

Knowledge of ecclesiastical corruptions stirred up a pious
Belgian layman named Tanchelm, who had journeyed to
Rome in order to see how her clergy lived, to declare that the
whole hierarchy was under the curse of Christ, that the churches-
were brothels, and that the sacraments were pollutions.
Crowds of armed followers gathered around him and enabled
him to take possession of Antwerp, where he reigned for sev-
eral years in a royal state, under which his brain is said to
have been so much affected that he called himself a new Mes-
siah, and celebrated his marriage with the Virgin Mary. At
last he was assassinated by a priest in 1125.

It was but a few months earlier that Peter de Bruis, who
had been preaching in the Alpine valleys on the Italian front-
ier against infant baptism, prayers for the dead, and tran-
substantiation, and had traveled as a missionary into Central
France, was burned to death at St. Giles by a mob provoked
at his making a fire with crosses in the market-place on Good
Friday, and there cooking meat to be eaten by himself and
his disciples. This last circumstance shows that he was no

1125J OTHER L\ 1 1!L Y A GIT A TOES. 141

Catharist ; nor was Henry of Cluny, who left his cloister in
indignation at the sins of the Church, and preached for more
than thirty years in Southern France with great success, being
especially noted for persuading men and women of bad char-
acter to marry. In 1148 he was thrown by Bernard into a
prison, where he soon died, leaving the name of Henricians to
a sect which was soon merged in the Waldenses.

The same fate now befell Eudo, a nobleman of Brittany,
who called himself Eon, the Star, thus claiming to be an
«on, or emanation from the Godhead, while he was also ena-
bled by the similarity of his name to the Latin pronoun, eum,
to pretend to be " He who is to come to judge the quick and
the dead." Many churches and monasteries were destroyed by
fanatical followers, some of whom, perished at the stake.

Open denunciations of the priesthood had already been made
in Rome itself by two preachers named Arnold, one of whom
was flung into the Tiber and drowned in 1128. His famous
namesake of Brescia was one of Abelard's pupils at Paris, where
he learned such mental independence that on his return to Italy
he proclaimed throughout Lombardy with great eloquence, that
the Church had no right to political power, or to any property,
except the voluntary contributions needed for her support.
His banishment from Italy, in 1139, caused him to return to
his master, with whom he was condemned at Sens the next
year to have his writings burned and be imprisoned. The latter
penalty he avoided by flight, first to a former fellow-pupil, then
papal legate, and afterwards Pope Celestine II., then to Con-
stance, and finally to Zurich, where Bernard, who had been
doing his best to have him arrested, was obliged to leave him
unmolested.

How little sway the Church had over these mountaineers
was shown in the strife then at its height between the people
of Schwyz and the mighty abbots of Einsiedeln, whose
attempts to take possession of their neighbors' lands were
met in 1114 by a sturdy resistance which did not quail be-
neath the ban of the empire or the excommunication of the
bishop of Constance. The peasants forced the priests to
carry on their functions without regard to this anathema ;

142 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1125

Uri, Unterwalden, Lucerne, and Zurich kept up friendly rela-
tions with their oppressed sister; and the strife had lasted more
than a century before it ended in the partition of the mount-
ain pastures between the abbey and the the villages.

Meantime, Arnold's views had reached Rome and moved
the citizens, in 1143, to revolt against Pope Innocent II., who
is said to have died of mortification. His successor, Celes-
tine II., had been a pupil of Abelard and a friend to Arnold,
so that he was more desirous to reform the Church than to
oppose the new Republic, now ruled by a patrician chosen by
the people and fifty-six senators appointed annually by ten
electors acting under the direction of the citizens. The at-
tempt to deprive the popes of all political power, and thu&
reduce them to their original and present position, provoked
Lucius II. to levy war against the Republic ; but he was
struck by a stone as he was attacking the Capitol, ax in
hand, and died the next day, February 3, 1145. The next
pontiff, Eugene III., left Rome at once, and was only able to
make two brief visits during his reign of eight years.
Meantime the power of the prefect, who had resided there as
representative of the emperor was annulled ; tribunes of the
people were appointed once more ; the old Roman law pre-
served in Justinian's Pandects which had been discovered in
1133, was re-enacted, and the falsity of those Decretals on
which the papal claim to sovereignty rested was pointed out
so thoroughly that the forgery was known even to the day-
laborers and washerwomen. All this was largely due to
Arnold, who entered the city with an army of Swiss and Lom-
bards early in 1146. The brief and friendly reign of
Anastasius IV. was followed by the hostile one of Adrian IV.,
an Englishman who was provoked by the attempt to murder
one of his cardinals, into depriving the city of public worship.
This interdict drove the populace, who had found themselves
impoverished by the cessation of pilgrimages, to expel the
leading republicans, and make peace with the pope. Both he
and the senate appealed to the Emperor Frederic I. then
on his way to coronation at St. Peter's. He took sides with
Adrian, and sent Arnold to Rome. There the champion of

1125] OTHER EARLY AGITATORS. 143

popular liberty was hung in 1155 at daybreak, to prevent
rescue by the people ; his body was burned to ashes which were
flung into the Tiber ; and his friends could only show their
indignation in a furious attack on the newly-crowned em-
peror, in which a thousand of them perished. The nineteenth
century has heard " Viva Arnoldo da Brescia " resound as a
war-cry in Italy ; and Niccolini's great tragedy has done much
to accomplish the deliverance for which its hero died.

This struggle of the people of Rome to free themselves from
the rule of the popes is merely an instance of the conflicts
which took place all over Italy, France and Flanders in the
twelfth century between the cities and their feudal lords, who
in most cases were bishops or abbots. Brescia broke the yoke
of her bishop in 1116 ; but usually the Lombard cities found
their most dangerous tyrant in the German emperors, and
were therefore forced to ally themselves with the rival despots
at Rome, who were ready to build up their own supremacy by
assisting rebellion against their competitors. Alessandria
owes its name and origin to the aid, given by the very pontiff
who supported Becket against England, to the Lombard
League of revolted cities, which began its operations in 1167
by rebuilding Milan, recently destroyed after four years of
conflict by Frederic I. This emperor, better known as Bar-
barossa, kept up the war until the great defeat of Lignanor
May 29, 1176, forced him to make a truce and finally to guar-
antee the substantial independence of the Lombard cities by
the treaty of Constance, June 25, 1182. This did not end the
contest between the papists and imperialists, also called Guelfs
and Ghibellines, the longer epithet in each couple belonging
to the same party, as may be observed for the reader's benefit.
Lombardy in general was against the emperor, as were Venice
and Florence, but Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, Cremona, Pavia,
Turin, Ferrara, Arezzo, and other cities gave him almost con-
stant support, and were all the more friendly on this account
to the heretical preachers, who suffered as yet little persecu-
tion any where in Italy.

The French cities usually found their king ready to help
them shake off the rule of the prelates and other princes, but

144 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1125

there were a few cases in which he was on the side of despo-
tism. The boldest movement was in Burgundy, where level-
ers, called Caputiati from the leaden images of the Virgin
worn in their caps, proclaimed universal liberty and equality
in 1182, but were soon put down by troops led by the bishop
of Auxerre.

IV.

The most powerful of rationalistic influences in the
twelfth century was the teaching of Abelard. This name is
used so naturally and uniformly by himself, Heloise, their
friends, and their enemies, that I am inclined to think it was
that of his family, though it is commonly thought to have been
derived either from Abeille, the French for bee, or from bajolare,
a dog-latin verb, said to have been used by his teacher in
mathematics, who was so provoked by his pupil's lack of in-
terest as to compare him to a dog too well fed to do more than
lick the bacon given him. All the other knowledge of the age,
especially about ^theology and metaphysics, was early mastered
by Peter Abelard, whose love for study led him to give up
his title and estate, and depart at the age of sixteen from his
father's castle in Brittany. Among his early teachers was
Roscellin, from whom he learned the unreality of abstractions, a
view he began to teach in 1102, when but twenty-three, in a
.-school he had opened at Melun, near Paris. The latter city
was already the center of medieval learning, and
was especially noted for the lectures which William
de Champeaux delivered in support of an extreme form
of Realism, according to which such a general name as
humanity is the common substance in all individual men, and
they do not differ essentially from each other, but merely in
properties and attributes. This lecturer was attacked before
his pupils by Abelard in 1108, and driven to such a modifica-
tion of his views that his reputation was at an end, and the
young thinker was able to gather a multitude of disciples
around him in a new school on Mount St. Genevieve, near
where the University now stands, but then outside of Paris.

1125] ABKLAED AND HELOI8E. 145

All the efforts of bis enemies could not prevent his being
invited in 1114 to the head of the established school in Notre
Dame, the highest position attainable by any teacher in
Christendom.

Thus Abelard became, at the age of thirty-five, the most
famous teacher in Europe. The number of disciples who
came to him, during the next six years, from all parts of
France, as well as from the Netherlands, England, Spain,
Rome, Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden, is estimated at
five thousand. Fifty of them, among whom was Peter
Lombard, afterward became bishops or archbishops, nineteen
cardinals, one of these finally becoming Pope Celestine II., and
Arnold of Brescia gained the highest honor that age could
give, the crown of martyrdom. To such men Abelard taught
the view, intermediate between Nominalism and Realism,
which has si5c1f~tfeen called Conceptualism, and held by
Thomas Aquinas, Locke, Reid, and Hamilton. This, at least,
appears to have been his position ; for he departed from
extreme Nominalism in the direction of Realism, so far as to
admit that abstract ideas and general terms are not mere
words, but are necessary conceptions of the similar qualities
and mutual relations of the objects we classify, While
asserting the distinct existence of individuals, he showed that
they have common qualities in which they form real classes
and groups, though these have' no existence apart from that of
their members. He admitted the existence of collective
ideas, so far as that they express actual resemblances, but no
further. One .of his plainest declarations is to the effect that
each individual, while containing much in his own essence
which is peculiar to himself and unlike any thing in others,
contains also something resembling the corresponding ele-
ments in others, but not identical. These similar elements of
single men we join together as we form the mental conception
which we call humanity, and which is so far, and only so far,
real, as that it is composed of realities. Thus while admit-
ting that universals and other abstractions have something
more than a nominal existence, he made it depend on human
habits of thought. The Realist put his abstract ideas, like

146 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1125

the Trinity, the apostolic succession and the divine right of
kings, so high as to oppress mankind. Abelard raised men
above abstractions.

The mental bondage of the age did not permit him to show
the full tendency of his teaching, or even to find it out.
Nothing is plainer than his desire to follow Aristotle, whom,
he says it will not do to blame, because, if he is set aside,
there is no other authority left in philosophy. The Stagyrite'a
independence of priests was not attainable in medieval Paris.
Her favorite teacher's aim was not to bring forward innova-
tions, but rather to put them down. Much as Abelard sought
mental distinction, it was not that of an heresiarch, but that
of a bishop, as William of Champeaux had now become, or
rather that of a pope. Marry he did not mean to do, but he
had not yet vowed celibacy, though he kept himself above
scandal until nearly forty.

Then he met Heloise, who attracted him, not so much by
her beauty as by the learning which placed her at seven-
teen above all women of the age. She had been carefully
educated by Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral, who called
her his niece, but seems to have been really her father. There
was nothing to prevent Abelard's marrying her, except his
desire to rise in the Church ; but this made him prefer to
make her his mistress. Accordingly, after some correspond-
ence, ostensibly on literature, with Heloise, he asked Fulbert
to take him as a boarder and her private tutor. The Canon
welcomed the proposal, and Heloise soon fell a victim to her
lover's brilliant intellect, vast learning, and skill in minstrelsy.
He cared for nothing but her society and wrote only love-
songs. These he was vain enough to publish ; and they
caused such scandal that he had to leave the house.

Soon after she became the mother of a son, whom she
called Astrolabe. Fulbert now urged Abelard to marry her,
and promised to keep the ceremony a secret. Heloise warned
her lover that it would not be concealed, and besought him not
to sacrifice his prospects in the Church, ruin his reputation, and
expose himself to endless annoyances, which she described in
copious quotations from Jerome, Augustine and Seneca. So en-

1125] ABELAED AND HELOISE. 147

tirely did she forget her own interests in his that she protested
that she would rather be his mistress than his wife, and that she
would not change places with an empress. Only at his urgent
request did she finally consent to a union, which she insisted
would degrade him and ruin them both. The ceremony was
performed in private, but Fulbert soon broke his promise of
secrecy. Heloise, who had returned to his roof, persisted that
she was not married, in spite of cruel treatment which made
her elope with Abelard, who placed her in a convent, though not
as a nun. This looked as if he wished to get rid of her, and
Fulbert had such a mutilation inflicted as made it impossible
for him to woo other women, gain a bishopric, or even hold
his place in the cathedral school. His pupils would have
assembled elsewhere ; Heloise and Astrolabe were still left
him ; but misdirected remorse led him to take the course pre-
scribed by the Church, desert his wife and child and turn
monk. Not only did he thus put himself under what soon
proved a cruel tyranny, but he insisted that Heloise should
precede him ; for he felt such a jealousy as she always remem-
bered mournfully. She was not yet twenty, and her fondness
for her studies, as well as for her child, made her look at the
cloister as a living grave ; her friends remonstrated to the
last; but her only wish was to please him for whom she says
she would have gladly rushed into the fiery pit. All this took
place before 1121.

With that year begins a nobler period. Abelard's rebukes
of the sensuality of the monks of St. Denis, the abbey he had
entered, made them glad to let him resume teaching, as was
eagerly desired by his former pupils, who begged him to ex-
plain the creed, because they could not believe what they did
not understand. So he tried to make the doctrine of the
Trinity intelligible, an attempt which always called out the
charge of heresy. The position that only individuals exist
independently prevented Abelard, who held that the Godhead
is an individual, from giving the three persons more than a
dependent existence, as attributes of the one God. For this
Sabellianism he was tried in 1121, at Soissons, where Ros-
cellin had been found guilty of Tritheism twenty-nine years

148 EAULY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1125

before, and where in 1114 the citizens, on finding that their
bishop had arrested two Catharists and was holding a council
to decide what to do with them, had settled the question by
burning them to death. These people threw stones at Abelard
and his disciples, and the prelates refused to let him defend
himself, for the reason that he would do so too skillfully. To
save his life he had to cast his book about the Trinity into a
fire around which all the council gathered. As it burned, and
he wept, one of the accusers complained of its representing
the Father alone as almighty, at which the papal legate, who
wras first among the judges, exclaimed : " Every one knows
that there are three Almighties ! " A friend of Abelard's,
apparently the teacher who had made the Bajolardus pun, now
quoted from the Athanasian creed : " And yet they are not
three Almighties, but one Almighty." Here the heretic him-
self asked leave to speak, but was only permitted to read this
creed, which he did, choking with tears. Then he was im-
prisoned in a neighboring monastery.

Ere long he was permitted to return to St. Denis, where he
ventured to speak of a passage in Bede, the great monkish
historian, opposed to the prevalent belief that the patron saint
of France, who walked two miles with his head in his hands
after it was cut off, was Paul's convert, Dionysius the Areo-
pagite, and also the author of some Mystical books translated
by John Scotus Erigena. The dissolute abbot is said to have
died of grief at this discovery, for which Abelard was scourged-
and threatened with capital punishment. Flight saved him-;
and the next abbot, Suger, suffered him to become a hermit
on a bit of land, which had been given him in the wilderness
near Troyes. The hut of reeds and straw which he called his
Consolation or Paraclete, a name in ill-repute from the use
made of it by the Catharists, was soon surrounded by thousands
of generous disciples. With them he spent four years, which
would have been happy if he had not been in constant fear of
his persecutors, at whose head now stood Bernard of Clair-
vaux, the most influential man in the century, through his
zeal, virtue, eloquence, and deadly enmity to progress.

In 1125 the monks of St. Gildas de Rhuys, near Vannes, on.

1125] ABELARD AND IIELOISE, 149

the coast of Brittany, chose Abelard as their abbot, and he
gladly took his place among the princes of the Church. The
title he held until his death, and the next ten years were
passed at his post. Here lie probably wrote most of his books,
though the Introduction to Theology is said to be the work
of which a copy was burned at Soissons, but of which others
were preserved unaltered by the author and his disciples.
Especially daring was the Sic et JVbn, or Yes and No, which
presents authorities in the affirmative and negative for one
hundred and fifty-seven propositions like these : " God is triple."
" The Father, and also the Son, may be called Holy Spirit." " The
old philosophers believed in the Trinity." " God should not be
represented by material images." " Our first parents were
created mortal." " The Word did not become flesh." « Christ
deceived." " He liberated all He found in hell." " The other
Apostles were equal to Peter." " All of them but John were
married." "Little children have no sin." "The works
of the saints are of no avail to other people." " It is some-
times right to kill one's self." These and other questions which
the Church claimed she had settled, Abelard throws open
again by quoting on both sides from the Scriptures, as well as
from the fathers and the creeds. That ascribed to Athanasius
is shown to be at variance with Augustine ; the accepted be-
lief that God's will is done is pitted against the declaration
(1 Tim., ii., 4), that He " will have all men to be saved," a
wish then thought sure to be disappointed ; such passages as
" I form the light and create darkness ; I make peace and
create evil " (Isaiah, xlv., 7), and " Shall there be evil in a city
and the Lord hath not done it ? " (Amos, iii., 6), with those
about His giving up the heathen to licentiousness and murder
(Romans, i., 24-29), His hardening Pharaoh's heart, and His
sending a lying spirit to make King Ahab lead his army into
a fatal battle, are brought up to prove that He is the author
of evil ; the proof-text of Romanism, " Thou art Peter, and
on this rock I will build my church," is shown to be irrecon-
cilable with Paul's declaration, " Other foundation can no man
lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor., iii., 11) ;
and it is further argued that the unbaptized will be saved,

150 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1125

that unbelievers may be benefited by good actions, and that
the Epistle of James is not authentic. The Preface confesses
the difficulty of knowing what books belong in the Bible, and
what was the original text, mentions the fact that Matthew
(xxvii., 9), attributed to Jeremiah the words of Zechariah
about the thirty pieces of silver, and placed the crucifixion at
a different hour from that given by Mark ; and even goes so
far as to say, " Doubt is not useless, for doubting causes us to
seek, and by searching we arrive at truth." This was bold
language in an age which said with Ambrose, " If I am con-
vinced by reason, I renounce my faith," with Augustine,
" Authority must go before reason," and with Anselm, " Be-
lieve and thou shalt understand." The Sic et Non, though it
has long been known to scholars, could not be printed before
the present century, and has never been translated. Abelard's
persecutors were not able to lay their hands on it, but hated
it merely for its title.

Equally obnoxious was his giving the name of Scito te
Ipsum, Know Thyself, to an ethical work, whose fundamental
principle is that merit consists not so much in the act as in the
intention or direction of the will, which he thus sets free
from supernatural control, as he did in the Introduction to
Theology. The same protest against servile reverence is made
in his Commentary on Romans, a work especially remarkable
for the boldness with which the fancy, that Jesus ransomed
man from Satan by pious fraud, is set aside, on the ground
that the devil had no right to any ransom. If he had gained
any power over man it was unjust, and Christ simply annulled
it. Anselm's doctrine, that the crucifixion satisfied the Divine
justice, and reconciled God to man, Abelard rejected on the
ground that so great a sin could not have pleased or satisfied
Him, and that He has alwrays loved us too much to need to be
reconciled. Jesus saves us by helping us to conquer our sins, ac-
cording to this Commentary, which also asserts the natural good-
ness of man, and claims a place in heaven for heathen sages.
Among other extant works is a dialogue, where a philosopher
declares the natural law of goodness supreme in authority,
and a Jew draws a pathetic picture of his nation's wrongs.

1135] ABELARD AND HELOISE. 151

Abelard might have been happy at St. Gildas, if he had not
l>een in constant conflict with his monks, who had filled the
abbey with their women and children, and met his attempts
to reform them by trying to poison him in the sacramental
chalice. It was in his own brother's house that a poor monk
died of the food prepared for the abbot, who was beset on the
highways by hired assassins. His greatest consolation was
his success, shortly after leaving his hermitage, in making it
the home of Heloise, whose cloister had been suppressed for
scandals of which she is wholly clear. The Paraclete was thence-
forth a convent, of which she was the head, and to which he
seems to have paid occasional visits, but without speaking to
her personally.

Just before Abelard finally fled by night from St. Gildas de
Rhuys, in 1135, he published the Story of His Misfortunes,
which is our best authority for his life thus far. This auto-
biography soon reached Heloise, who wrote him those famous
letters in which tender pity and ardent affection are mingled
with mild reproaches for his neglect of her who had given
herself wholly to him and was still only his. It was solely to
please him that she had taken the monastic yoke, and her ut-
most efforts are too weak to efface the memory of their love.
His replies are much less ardent. Her third letter requests
him to draw up a new rule for her convent, permitting the
nuns to wear linen under their woolen robes, to eat meats
more often, and fast less strictly than men, and to exclude
visitors more carefully. This petition he granted, though he
did not go to the extent desired by Heloise, who asks why
any thing not sinful in itself should be forbidden. She also
declares, that God cares more for holiness and virtue than for
privations, and that Christians ought to think more of giving
up their vices than their viands. The most original part of the
correspondence is the list of biblical difficulties which she sent
him for solution. Among these are the inconsistency of curs-
ing the fig-tree with the moral perfection of Jesus, the im-
probability that Moses wrote the last chapter of Deuteronomy
which relates his own death and burial, the impossibility of
any punishment of crime by man, if he who is without sin

152 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [114O

must cast the first stone, the conclusion, from the words with
what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged, that God will
deal unjustly with the unjust, and the discrepancy of the
prophecy of Jesus, that he should be " three days and three
nights " in the grave with the gospel statements that he
passed less than two days and two nights there. Alas, that
the woman who could ask such questions was not at liberty
to give them the only answer which does not violate the
sanctity of truth.

In 1136 we find Abelard lecturing once more on Mount St.
Genevieve, but soon ceasing to do so, and then passing out of
sight, until we hear him offer to defend his orthodoxy against
Bernard of Clairvaux, before the king and leading prelates of
France at the council of Sens. There our champion appeared
on Monday, June 3, 1140, but as soon as he heard what accu-
sations were presented, he appealed to the pope and left the
session, thus saving himself and Arnold di Brescia, who was
arraigned with him, from immediate arrest. That he had
found out how little justice could be hoped for in France was
shown by the prompt condemnation of his books. This, ac-
cording to a statement which a friend published at the time,
and afterward lamented as irreverent but not as untrue, took
place when the bishops had drunk so freely that the unwonted
labor of listening to reading aloud soon put them to sleep.
When the reader came to any thing he did not understand, he
shouted " Damnatis ? " " Do you condemn ? " Then the
sleepy prelates murmured, "Damnamus," which soon sank
into "Namus," " We swim." Thus Abelard was found guilty
of fourteen errors, among which were the reduction of the
three persons to attributes, the denial of predestination and
inheritance of Adam's guilt, the limitation of sin to the inten-
tion, and the assertion that Jesus saves us only by his teach-
ing and example. This decision was sent by the council to
the pope, who promptly ordered that Abelard and Arnold be
imprisoned and their books burned, which latter was actually
done at St. Peter's.

Now Heloise hastened to console Abelard ; but he soon left
her in order to plead his cause at Rome. On the way he

1142] AVERROES AND MA1MONIDES. 153

stopped to rest at Cluny, where he was persuaded to remain
and reconcile himself with Bernard. None of the condemned
propositions were recanted, but otherwise he showed such
piety and meekness that he was on good terms with the
Church when he died, at St. Marcel, near Chateauroux, on
April 21, 1142. Heloise reached about the same age, sixty-
three, as she survived him until May 16, 11(34, when she left
behind her a high reputation for piety, goodness and learning.
Her knowledge of Greek, which was almost unrivaled in
Western Europe, was commemorated for centuries by the an-
nual celebration of public worship in that language at the
Paraclete. She is by far the greatest woman who had yet ap-
peared in Christendom, and there was no other like her before
the eighteenth century. Her character was much nobler than
that of her husband, in regard to whom it should be observed
that his licentiousness had passed away before he developed
any alarming amount of skepticism, and that the latter was
considered much more culpable than the former by ecclesi-
astics.

v.

Later in the twelfth century appeared two other rationalists
who equaled Abelard in ability, and greatly surpassed him in
knowledge of their common master, Aristotle. Averroes, or
Ibn Roshd, author of what Dante calls the great commentary,
strove zealously but vainly to engraft Peripateticism on Islam-
ism, and was not deterred by the banishment inflicted on him
in Andalusia from founding a great system of philosophic re-
ligion, which was early imported by Jewish adherents into
Christendom, where its principle that all souls are alike in na-
ture was developed into such a conception of their unity as
proved irreconcilable with the doctrine of individual immor-
tality. Especially beneficial were his recommending the har-
monious use of all our faculties as the best way to union with
God, representing prophecy as a state natural to man, and pro-
testing against the belief of orthodox Moslems, that right and
wrong do not differ in themselves, but only in consequence of

154 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1150

the Divine decrees. Singularly in advance of the age are his
explaining the frailty and poverty of women by their habit of
depending wholly on men, and thus living like plants, and the
pauperism in Moslem cities by the indolence of the female
population. Bitter personal experience led him to say, "The
worst tyranny is that of priests." But the noblest words of
Averroes are these : " The religion of philosophers is the
study of whatever exists." " The most lofty worship is such
knowledge of God's works as leads us to know Him in reality.
This in the Divine eyes is the noblest of actions, as the vilest
is charging with error and presumption him who carries out
this religion, which is nobler than all the others."

A similar attempt to reconcile the Old Testament and Tal-
mud with Greek and Arab philosophy was made at this time
by S'aladin's court-physician, Moses Maimonides, often called
Rambam by the people of whom he is the ablest representa-
tive, except Spinoza, and justly entitled the Hebrew Aristotle.
His Guide of the Perplexed and Commentary on the Mishna
were burned indignantly in the synagogues ; but his funda-
mental principle that revelation can never contradict reason,
and should always be interpreted rationally, had a mighty in-
fluence over Christians as well as Jews, though some of the
latter paid such blind reverence as to try to keep knowledge
within the limits he attained, instead of giving it the free
course he wished. How far medieval Judaism, Islamism, and
Christianity agreed in their attitude toward rationalism ap-
pears in the essentially similar treatment suffered by Maimo-
nides, Averroes and Abelard.

VI.

Heresy was mainly aue, as Pierre Vidal, an early trouba-
dour, said in 1194, to the corruption of the Church, which con-
temporary English satires, attributed to Walter Map, speak of
as universal from the priest, who cares more for his harlot than
for the Eleven Thousand Virgins, and would sell the whole
Trinity for three half-pence, to the pope whose heart is set on
marcs of silver, rather than on Mark, the Evangelist.

1150] WALDENSES AND MYSTICS. 155

" Est Leo pontifex, summus qui devorat ;
Qui libras satiens, libros impignorat ;
Marcam respiciens, Marcum dedecorat ;
In sumrais navigans, in nummis anchorat."

It was not so much the profligacy of the rulers of the Church,
however, as their efforts to suppress rationalism, that called
forth a new view peculiarly favorable to individual independ-
ence. Abelard, Arnold, Peter of Bruis, Henry of Cluny,
and the Catharists were condemned for relying too much on
reason and giving too little place to faith. Bernard of Clair-
vaux sought to save the Church by teaching that truth is not
reached by reasoning but by intuition, not by study but by
inspiration. Two of Abelard's disciples thought this view bet-
ter than that for which he was condemned. Gilbert, bishop
of Poitiers, went so far in denial of personality as to be forced
to a recantation by the Synod of Rheims 1148 ; while Ber-
nard Sylvester, master of an influential school at Chartres, wrote
his Microkosmos and Megakosmos in such full allegiance to
Platonism and utter indifference to the Church and her sacra-
ments, that only his obscurity of style can have saved him
from being forced to retract, like his disciple, William of
Conches. Hildegard, a German abbess, who wrote a Materia
Medica and protested against the persecution of Jews and
Catharists, had the full approval of Bernard and the pope, as
she prophesied that the avarice and ambition which polluted
all the hierarchy would soon arouse the nations to cast off its
yoke, and seize its wealth. Not until the next century was any
attempt made to suppress those yet more dangerous predic-
tions, then known as the Eternal Gospel, in which Abbot
Joachim, of Floris, in Calabria, announced the speedy estab-
lishment of universal liberty in the Reign of the Holy Ghost.
Tanchelm and Eon had probably fostered similar expectations.

The Mystic's faith in the soul's capacity for passively re-
ceiving direct light from God, and thus becoming independent
of the Church, was now widely diffused by perusal of the
writings of Erigena and Avicebron. Many such works were
translated from Arabic into Latin, under the direction of the
archbishop of Toledo, between 1130 and 1150. Among them

156 EAELT MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1150

was Al Gazali's Resurrection of Theology -, which had just
been publicly burned in all the Moorish cities on account of the
plainness with which the founder of Sufism, taught its charac-
teristic idea, strikingly set forth in " The Beggar's Courage "
and other poems in Alger's Poetry of the East, that the soul
by divesting herself of individuality may become one with
God, when of course she will have no need of mosque or Koran.
Among other importations into Christendom came the Guide
for the Solitary ', by Ibn Badja, or Avempace, who was put in
prison by the Spanish Moslems for teaching that each soul has
a natural capacity for entering into union with God. This
was not to be done by mental activity but by asceticism,
prayer, and quiet meditation. Ibn Tophail, well known to
Christian Mystics in the thirteenth century, if not in the
twelfth, as Abubacer, describes his Self -Taught Philosopher in,
a book so-called and afterward much used by the early
Quakers, as shutting himself up in a cavern where full enjoy-
ment of the Inner Light was gained by excluding all the knowl-
edge given by the senses. Similar views were engrafted on
one of their most powerful antagonists, by the Arab transla-
tors through whom Aristotle became dimly known to Latin
scholars in the twelfth century. Even that opponent of
Sufism, Averroes, was pressed into the service of Mysticism
because he held that all souls are one in their highest life, and
that the prophetic condition is natural to man, which latter
view was also advocated by Maimonides. And among the
few productions of Greek philosophy then accessible in Latin,
was the Timceus in which Plato teaches the natural tendency
of the soul to grow upwards toward her kindred in heaven.

The Christian Mystic found he could agree with Jews,
Moslems, and Pagans, and that a holy soul is above all bound-
aries between religions. Temple, synagogue, mosque, and
church seemed only converging paths, all leading to unity
with God, but none of them needing to be traversed again by
the soul which had once attained the divine life. What need
of priests or sacraments to those already one with God ?
What authority had creeds to those who saw Him face to
face ? Nay more, was not every soul drawn toward God so-

1170] WALDEN8ES AND MYSTICS. 157

strongly that all ecclesiastical forms and ordinances could only
hinder her upward course ?

Thus persecution of rationalism produced Mysticism, which
soon claimed complete independence. The results of the new
faith were not fully seen until the thirteenth century, but we
find Amalric of Bena teaching openly, and with great suc-
cess at Paris at 1200, that God is every thing, and every thing
is God, a proposition tending to obscure all differences be-
tween sacred and profane, and even between right and wrong.
This form of Mysticism was largely due to dislike of that
view of the potency of evil held by the Catharists. These
latter, like the Paulicians, had their prophets, and the mysti-
cal spirit awakened in the twelfth century was too congenial
to heresy, for any sect to resist it easily.

So strong did it soon become over a society originally
founded within the Church^ and on the basis of Biblical au-
thority, that I may speak here of an event whose importance
has, I think, been overestimated. Peter Waldo, a pious mer-
chant at Lyons was led by his reverence for the Bible and
the Fathers of the Church to have copious translations made
from both sources by two priests, about 1170. Study of the
Gospels made him devote himself to a life of poverty, purity,
and missionary labor, and give all his property to the poor.
Many followers gathered around him, and gradually formed
a society under the name of the " Poor Men of Lyons." In
1179 they asked for sanction from the pope, but it was refused
after an examination in which the delegates made them-
selves ridiculous by their excessive reverence for the Virgin.
They kept up their labors despite the papal prohibition, and
gradually came to discard the doctrine of purgatory, as well as
the intercession of the saints, and the efficacy of the sacrament,
unless administered by virtuous and holy priests. Forgiveness
of sins they sought from God alone, and their own houses seemed
as holy places for prayer and the Lord's Supper as the churches.
Married life was more honorable, and asceticism in general
less strict than among the Albigenses, from whom the Wal-
denses further differed in having no secret doctrines, or divis-
ion into castes, and in allowing women to preach.

158 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1170

Their name is derived from that of Waldo, according to
the best authorities, and not from their residence in the val-
leys. Nor can they be shown to have existed before 1170 ;
for this theory rested mainly on the passage in the Noble
Lesson claiming that this poetic account of their views was
composed about 1100, but it has recently been discovered
that the original date was 1400, and has been altered in the
manuscripts. (See Revue des Deux Mondes, August 1,
1868, p. 686-7.) That this new view spread rapidly was large-
ly due to the previous activity of Peter de Bruis, Henry of
Cluny, Arnold of Brescia, and the Catharists. The expulsion
of the Waldenses from Lyons by the archbishop in 1183 only
set them to work making converts through Southern France
and Northern Italy, especially in those Alpine valleys where
they still flourish after cruel persecutions. The first mention
of their presence in Piedmont is in 1198. Their purity of
life and success in teaching even the rudest peasants to read
the Scriptures, are admitted by their enemies. They were
less skeptical than the Albigenses, but they followed the
course best suited in that age for checking the tyranny of
Rome, when they set up the rival authority of the Bible,
avoided weakening their position by belief in Manichoean er-
rors, destined soon to pass away, and yet followed the alle-
gorical system of interpretation so boldly as not only to be
freed from bondage to the letter of Scripture, but to be
brought into close alliance with some daring Mystics. (See
ch. vi., sec. iv., ch, viii., sec v., Herzog, Romanischen Wald-
enser, pp., 19, 131, 133, 178, 188, 190. Schmidt, Tauler, p.
194. Zeitschrift filr Historische Theologie. 1840, i., p.
120-7 ; in., p. 54.

VII.

The first five centuries of the seven covered by this chapter,
are remarkable for the small amount of free thought in Europe.
The Paulicians did not leave Asia Minor before the tenth cen-
tury and the Motazalites never spread beyond the protection
of the crescent, so that the Western Church was even less dis-

1187] CONCLUSION. 159

turbed by these organized forms of rationalism, than by the
isolated speculations of Erigena, and other liberal thinkers
who were not considered dangerous enough to be punished
capitally. Heretics were first burned in the year 1000, and
during the next two hundred years this torture was inflicted
on many of the Catharists, who nevertheless continued to in-
crease in consequence of that notorious corruption of the
Church, which they sought to explain by preaching that she
had been conquered by Satan, and to counteract by practicing
an asceticism she could not rival. They became so powerful
before the end of the twelfth century, as to hold public synods
and disputations with the Romanists in Southern France,
where they won the name of Albigenses.

More philosophic opposition to the fundamental theories of
ecclesiastical despotism was offered during the second half of
the eleventh century, when Berengar attacked the pretensions
of priests to work miracles, and Roscellin exposed the un-
reality of abstractions. The latter work was prosecuted with
great success by Abelard, equally famous for the hatred
which met his attempts to make theology rational, and for
the love of the gifted Heloise. Among his many pupils was
Arnold of Brescia, the most famous of those agitators who
stirred up revolt against the temporal power of the Church in
the twelfth century, without favoring irrational asceticism.
The same work was taken up unwillingly by the Walden-
ees.

All these assailants of the Church of Rome were greatly
encouraged by the failure of the crusades against tlie Turks
in the twelth century. The trial by battle was thought to
declare the judgment of God, and was constantly appealed to
in order to decide on the title to real estate, the chastity of
women, the loyalty of noblemen, the correctness of liturgies,
and all other points of controversy. Bernard had predicted a
glorious success for the second crusade on the ground that
God would not suffer his own cause to be lost. This expedi-
tion, headed by the emperor of Germany and the king of
France, proved a total failure. The Turks went on reconquer-
ing Palestine, and in 1187 Saladin took Jerusalem, which has

160 EARLY MEDIEVAL HERESY. [1200

never been regained except temporarily by the Christians.
Then came the third crusade, led by Frederick Barbarossa
and Richard Coeur -de Lion, but even these mighty warriors
could gain no permanent success of importance, and at the
close of the century, nearly all Palestine was irrevocably lost.
Well might the heretic preacher tell his hearers about Daniel
and Belshazzar, remind them of these recent disasters, and
then say, " Thus, O Rome, thou hast been weighed in the
balance, and found wanting. Behold, thy kingdom shall be
taken from thee ! "

The great strength of Catharism, Nominalism, and Wal-
densianism, was in France, where also arose, during the twelfth
century, in consequence of the ecclesiastical opposition to
rationalism, and under the influence of the works of Grecian,
Moslem, and Hebrew visionaries, a tendency to seek wisdom
and holiness through such submission to the Inner Light as
was equally inconsistent with mental activity and with reli-
ance on outward sacraments. Mysticism had mingled with
rationalism in Erigena, and it now became supreme in Tan-
chelm, Eon, Gilbert, Sylvester, Amalric, and their followers,
while it was also represented in Germany by Hildegard, and
in Italy by Joachim. Catharism was also penetrated by this
spirit which we shall soon find at work among the Waldenses.
Meantime the rights of the intellect were maintained against
all authority, whether of Intuition, Bible, Church, Koran, or
Talmud, by a few isolated scholars, chief among whom are
Abelard, Averroes, and Maimonides. Arnold of Brescia,
Peter of Bruis, and Henry of Cluny seem also to ha$re
preached revolt on rationalistic principles, which were
certainly held by Simon of Tournay, who is said to have ex-
claimed, in closing a lecture at Paris, about the year 1200,
" Ah, my little Jesus, how I have set you up to-day ! But I
shall take you down again to-morrow."

These two currents of rationalism and Mysticism we shall
see flowing side by side through medieval history, often in-
fluencing the same individual, as they did our own Emerson,
and constantly pressing with united force against the barriers
with which the Church checked progress. Both were greatly

1200] CONCLUSION. 161

assisted by Jewish, and also by Arab authors. Moslem cul-
ture had now become far richer than that of Christendom,
and so sunset usually surpasses sunrise, but the glory of the
one leads only to darkness, while the other ushers in the day.

CHAPTER VI.

SUPPBESSION OF DUALISM AND PERSECUTION OF MYSTICISM
AND SCHOLARSHIP IN THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, we find Amal-
ric of Bena commencing to teach Pantheism at Paris, where
a university has but just been founded. The Waldenses are
busy spreading knowledge of the Bible through Southern
France, Northern Italy, and the intermediate Alpine valleys,
while the surviving followers of Peter of Bruis, Henry of
Cluny, and Arnold of Brescia, gladly help the progress of
the new and vigorous movement. The forerunners of Prot-
estantism receive full tolerance in Albi, Beziers, Carcassonne,
and other cities between the Rhone and the Pyrenees, a re-
gion where the Albigensians, or Catharists, openly propagate
a darker creed and sterner asceticism than either the Walden-
sian or the Romish, and find themselves safe in the protection
of princes and nobles who hate priesthoods and priestcraft,
care little for any doctrines, whether orthodox or heterodox,
and live a gay, joyous life, which violates the precepts of the
sects as well as of the Church. These patrons of heretics are
best represented to us by the troubadours, now in the height
of an activity which leads them even further from Catharism
than from Catholicism, in their praise of love and mirth.

The Languedocian cities, like many others in France, and
all the great towns in Flanders and on the Rhine, are now
almost republics ; and full independence has been gained by
Avignon, Marseilles, Milan, Venice, Florence, Genoa, Pisa,
Bologna, and the neighboring seats of commerce, manufac-
tures, and social culture. Italy has not forgotten Arnold of
Brescia in her prosperity, and the strife of Catholic with
Catharist does much to embitter that between Guelf and

1201] THE SITUATION. 163

Ghibelline. Abelard's protest against the tyranny of abstrac-
tions is exerting ever increasing power over the scholars, not
only of France, but of the surrounding nations ; and the
shorter, though more dangerous path to liberty through
mysticism is being brought to light by the writings of
Joachim in Italy, as well as by the lectures of Amalric at
Paris. These rationalistic and transcendental tendencies are
much encouraged by the Jews, now conspicuous as scholars
and philosophers, as well as physicians and merchants, all over
Europe, and flourishing despite frequent persecutions. Their
best friend, the German emperor, has suffered much from the
hostility of the popes and the Lombard League, so that the
efforts of the German and Italian princes and cities toward
independence find little check at this time, especially as a
fierce civil war has been excited by the partiality with which
Innocent III. is trying to set aside the rightful claimant of the
throne. The serfs, too, are seeking to free themselves from a
yoke not to be broken except by bloody hands. The
shepherds of Schwyz continue at open war with the
abbots of Einsiedeln ; and the peasants near Bremen
are beginning to resent the tyranny of priests and no-
bles in a way soon to make the Stedingers famous. Ger-
many, England, and the Northern nations are still loyal to
Rome, despite her exactions. A few heretics are to be discov-
ered in Paris, as well as in the Rhenish and Flemish cities, but
the chief seat of heterodoxy and unbelief is the region ex-
tending from Arragon through Languedoc, Provence, and
Piedmont into Lombardy and Tuscany. There Catharism has
reached its height of power ; for its deadliest enemy has
already mounted the papal throne. For the moment, however,
Innocent III. is fully occupied in fitting out that last great
crusade, which even his mighty influence could not prevent the
Venetians from diverting to the conquest of Constantinople.
A century of struggle for celibacy has not purified the
Church, and there are many who look forward with Joachim
toward the speedy termination of her reign.

164 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1209

II.

The failure of all attempts, even by the zealous Dominic,
to convert the Albigenses, and the steady refusal of the Lan-
guedocians to persecute each other, despite the terrible warn-
ing of the crusade against Albiand Beziers in 1181, provoked
Innocent III., in 1207, to command Raymond VI., count of
Toulouse, and mightiest of the princes of Southern France, to
permit all that region to be overrun by a great horde of
slaughterers of heresy. He refused, and was excommunicated
by the papal legate, who was assassinated for it, though not
by the order of the count. The latter, in order to escape
falling the first victim to the crusade which this murder made
inevitable, was obliged to let himself be scourged in church
by the bishops before the eyes of his servants and subjects, as
well as to promise to aid the attack on his own nephew and
vassal, the lord of Albi, Beziers, and Carcassonne. In return,
he was guaranteed immunity by the pope, who, however,
wrote to his legates, that they should imitate that Apostle
who said to the Corinthians, "Being crafty I caught you with
guile," and should pretend friendship until the count had
helped them conquer his neighbors, after which he too should
fall.

The summer of 1209 saw 100,000 French and Burgundian
crusaders, wearing the red cross on their breasts, as the in-
vaders of Palestine did on their shoulders, and marching
straight against Viscount Raymond Roger, who held Albi and
Beziers under his uncle, the count of Toulouse, and Carcas-
sonne under the king of Arragon, and who was then but
twenty-four. Vainly had he pleaded for peace, and professed
his orthodoxy, on which there was no blemish but tolerance.
Beziers, whose citizens boasted that, if God were to choose
any city to dwell in it would be theirs, was stormed, and a
universal massacre commanded by the papal legate, who, when
his soldiers hesitated at slaying Roman Catholics, cried, "Kill
all ! God will know his own ! " No living thing was spared,
not a priest, or woman, or child, or animal. Seven thousand
dead bodies were found in a single church, and the whole

1209] THE CRUSADES AGAINST TOLERANCE. 165

number murdered can not have fallen short of 40,000, as the
neighboring peasantry had sought refuge in Beziers. This
massacre on July 22, 1209, is one of the bloodiest in religious
history.

After setting the city on fire, the pious host rushed against
Carcassonne, which had stood a seven years' siege from Char-
lemagne, and is still strongly fortified. There Raymond
Roger defended himself vigorously, until pity for the towns-
people, who were dying of thirst and fever, obliged him to
let the king of Arragon, who had been brought across the
Pyrenees by the news of the Beziers butchery, try to close the
war. No better terms could be obtained than leave for the
viscount to ride out in armor with twelve companions, and he
replied, " I had rather be flayed alive, than abandon the mean-
est of my subjects." Innocent III. had publicly announced
that no faith ought to be kept with any man who was faithless
toward God, and his legate now sent an envoy to pretend to
be a friend and relative of the viscount and assure him that
his only chance of peace was in going to the camp of the
crusaders, among whom he would be perfectly safe. Roger's
desire to save his people led him to follow this advice, but he
was at once made prisoner. Then Carcassonne surrendered
unconditionally ; four hundred heretics were burned alive, fifty
more were hung, and the rest of the people were obliged to
march out so slightly dressed as to show that all their valuables
were left for pillage.

The principality was now so far subdued that its rule was
offered by the legate to his chief confederate, the duke of
Burgundy, who replied, " I have lands enough of my own
without taking those of the viscount, who has suffered
enough already." No such scruples troubled Simon de Mont-
fort, whose first step was to throw the rightful lord into a
dungeon, where, as was acknowledged by Innocent III., he
soon died of poison. Albi and other cities now submitted to
the usurper, who was able that fall to take away Pamiers, one
of the Waldensian cities of refuge, from the count of Foix.
This nobleman had permitted his wife; the daughter of Don
Pedro, king of Arragon, to join the Catharists. His sister, the

166 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1210

beautiful Esclarmonde, or Light of the World, had already been
openly received by them as one of the Perfect, and had defended
her faith in a dispute with the monks, who could only say, " Go
to your spindle, lady ; you have nothing to do with things like
these." Another sister was known to be a Waldensian.

Many heretics had fled to the castle of Minerva, founded
where the Goddess of Wisdom had once been worshiped,
and this conquest was the principal event of 1210, when
Simon was aided by a fresh army of crusaders, conducted by
his wife, Alice. The craft of the legate could not prevent
the garrison from coming to terms, which included the prom-
ise of mercy to apostates. A crusader exclaimed indignantly,
" We have not come to pardon, but to exterminate." He was
assured that very few would be willing to recant. In fact, the
one hundred and forty Albigensian men and women shut them-
selves up in separate houses, refused to listen to the bishop who
bade them return to the Church, and when told that their pyre
was lighted, marched thither joyfully and flung themselves into
the flames. This campaign was especially noted for miracles..
None of these crusades lasted more than forty days, and it
was that of 1211 which stormed Lavaur, the last city of the
murdered viscount. The monks chanted their " Te Deum "
during the massacre, after which the garrison were executed
in cold blood, a noble lady of high virtue buried alive, and
four hundred heretics burned at the stake, to the great joy of
the " Police-men of God," as they are styled by the pope.
Thus closed the first act of this great religious drama.

Raymond of Toulouse had taken no part in the contest,
except to supply the invaders with provisions ; but he was
now told that he must submit to further conditions, so humil-
iating that the king of Arragon tore in pieces the copy sub-
mitted to his decision. Other monarchs would not intercede,
and prelates who did so were deposed promptly. The sum-
mer of 1212 saw Toulouse and its environs laid waste. The
citizens defended themselves with such courage as to keep all
their gates open, and make new ones for sorties ; the count
of Foix and other princes gave aid gallantly, and Montfort met
with his first repulse. Monsegur, a castle in the Pyrenees,

1213] THE CRUSADES AGAINST TOLERANC.

built by Esclarmonde de Foix as a refuge for her sect
also attacked, but its hour had not yet come. This sum-
mer's crusaders had mostly gone to Spain to help the king of
Arragon defeat the Moors.

The rescued monarch asked in vain for justice to his broth-
er-in law, the count of Toulouse, and his vassal, the son of
the murdered viscount. At last he marched to . their relief,
and on September 12, 1213, the allied army, 40,000 strong,
went into battle at Muret against Moutf ort, who had but a
thousand soldiers, but was enough of a general to bring his
whole force against the Spanish knights. Don Pedro exposed
himself so rashly as to be soon slain, and then came a general
rout, in which some 20,000 perished. This victory was
ascribed to the prayers of Dominic, who accompanied Simon
the Catholic, as he was now called, and promised his soldiers
instant admission to Paradise.

The next year brought such a swarm of crusaders as could
not be resisted, and Montfort become lord of nearly all Lan-
guedoc from the Rhone to the Pyrenees. The legate tried
to keep Narbonne, of which he was now archbishop. Simon
the Catholic was put under an interdict, but he forced his
priests to say mass, and marched his soldiers into the city
with drawn swords, from which the archbishop, who had
come out with all his paraphernalia to overawe them, ran
away in terror. Despite this irreligion, as great as that for
which the Languedocians had been robbed and murdered,
Montfort's title to the conquered territory was solemnly con-
firmed by the pope, two patriarchs, seventy-one primates,
four hundred and twelve bishops, eight hundred abbots and
priors, the ambassadors of Christian sovereigns, free cities,
and universities, and the other members of the great Lateran
council of 1215, famous for establishing the doctrine of tran-
substantiation, and the practice of annual auricular confession^
by which girls of twelve and boys of fourteen were made use
of as spies against their parents ; but most famous, or rather
infamous, for giving the solemn sanction of Christendom to
wholesale massacre and violation of all law and order for the
purpose of punishing toleration and maintaining persecution.

168 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1216-

Even Innocent III., however, could not refuse the Langue-
docian princes permission to reconquer their inheritance.
Raymond, son to the count of Toulouse, and then but nine-
teen, crossed the Rhone early in 1216, and helped the citizens
of Beaucaire regain their citadel. Montfort did his utmost
to assist the garrison but was compelled to cede the city. He
returned to Toulouse in such a rage that he murdered the
envoys she sent to pacify him, and his troops joined those of
her bishop, and would-be destroyer, Fulk, in slaying and
ravishing the people. In September, 1217, Count Raymond
appeared before the gates, and all the citizens armed them,
selves with clubs, sickles, and plowshares, slew the tyrant's
mercenaries and welcomed in their rightful lord. Then came
ten months of siege which ended soon after Montfort's death,
on June 25, 1218, by a stone from a catapult worked by
women.

In the fourth act of the drama the stage was filled mainly
with sons and successors of the original characters. The
young Montfort was aided by the anathemas of the new
pope, Honorius III., as well as by the arms of the Dauphin,
afterward Louis VIII. Raymond VI. died in 1222, kissing
the cross, and giving every sign of orthodoxy, but his body
could not be buried, and his skeleton might be seen at Tou-
louse a century ago. The more warlike count of Foix passed
away about this time and was succeeded by his son, Roger
Bernard, who had fought gallantly against the crusaders, and
who afterward distinguished himself by declaring that
religion ought to be free to all, and that no one's liberty of
worship should be interfered with, even by the pope. In
1224 the young counts of Foix and Toulouse regained
Be"ziers and Carcassonne for the son of the murdered viscount,
and forced Amalric de Montfort to retire from the field.

The last act of the drama opened as the cession of the
Montfort claim to the French crown caused the beautiful and
energetic Queen Blanche to send down a swarm of crusaders
in 1228, to destroy all the houses and vineyards around Tou-
louse. Bishop Fulk and his clergy sang psalms while the
laborers plied spade and ax. Raymond VII.'s dominions-

1233] TEE INQUISITION. 169

were incorporated in 1229 with the Kingdom of France,
which was thus extended to the Mediterranean. Toulouse
itself he retained during his lifetime, but only by letting himself
be publicly scourged in Notre Dame, offering rewards for the
arrest of heretics, taking the red cross for Palestine, and
making war on the count of Foix. The latter soon submitted,
and was stripped of his inheritance, as was the young vis-
count of Albi and Beziers. Thus closed that twenty years'
struggle to establish persecution in Southern France, which
destroyed her poetry, liberty, and industry, and changed her
from the home of the troubadour to that of the guerrilla
and the inquisitor. Myriads of lives were sacrificed in order
to put down tolerance, which Christendom was taught to
think more sinful than perjury, treachery, robbery, arson,,
rape, murder, or massacre.

* m.

All this time persecution went on steadily, the crusaders
being accustomed to order any one they suspected of heresy
to kill a chicken, and putting whoever refused it to death at
once as a Catharist. More systematic investigations were also
carried on, and resulted in the establishment, during 1233, of
the terrible Dominicans, the blood-hounds of the Lord, as
inquisitors in Southern France. The ancient rule of the
Church, to condemn no one as a heretic until he obstinately
refused to give up opinions which his judges declared errone-
ous, had been given up during the Languedocian crusades, and
the new tribunal was much more ready to convict than acquit
the accused. Thus at Toulouse in the next year, 1234, we
find a man sent to the stake while protesting that he had never
ceased to be faithful to the Church of Rome. Twenty-two
men, eleven women and six children were burned there in one
day, and on that of the canonization of Dominic, August 4,
1234, the grand-inquisitor was about to sit down to dinner
with the recently-appointed bishop of Toulouse, when they
heard that a dying woman near by was' about to receive the
Catharist consolation. They hastened away from their repast

170 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. \\23Z

to her chamber, which they entered without a word. Dimness
of sight made her mistake them for friends, and she proceeded to
recite her creed. They soon interrupted her, and bade her re-
cant her heresies. On her refusal, they had her carried through
the streets in her bed and flung at once into the flames already
lighted for others. This excited an indignation, which grew
still greater when the practice of digging up and burning the
remains of people whose orthodoxy was suspected became
general. In 1235 the inquisitors were expelled from Toulouse
by the magistrates, but they soon returned. Repeated insur-
rections are recorded at Narbonne, Carcassonne, and Albi, and
many inquisitors were assassinated, but still their work went on.
There were three grades of punishment. The lowest, con-
sisting in compulsory pilgrimages, tines, and wearing of yellow
crosses, was inflicted for listening to heretic preachers, or
neglecting to denounce others for doing so. Thus Alexandris,
aged eleven, was sentenced in 1315 to wear this cross, holier
than the red one of the crusaders, for failing to inform against
her own mother. Similar sentences against young girls who
had not betrayed their parents are frequently recorded, and
among other wearers of the yellow cross was a man who had
taken off his hat to a heretic, and another who had spoken
twice during six years to his heterodox brother. Graver
offenses, such as worshiping with heretics, washing their
clothes, shaving their beards, repaying money borrowed from
them, giving them food, shelter or money, or accepting their
offers of marriage were punished with imprisonment for life ;
and this was so common that the council of Narbonne complained
to the pope in 1243 that there were cities where sufficient
stone and lime could not be found for building prisons enough
for all those who ought to be confined for life. (See Lamoth
Langon, Histoire de V Inquisition, vol. ii., p. 530). The ex-
treme penalty of burning heretics alive, or their bodies taken
from their graves, was usually reserved for preachers or other
noted or obstinate disbelievers, but we find it inflicted in
1249 on a young maiden of Carcassonne, named Madeline,
who was a zealous Romanist, but had given her father, whom
she had not seen since her childhood, food and shelter, suffered

1233] THE INQUISITION. 171

him to hold heretical worship in his own house, been present
at it, though without participating, and given no information
to the inquisitors. Of the number who perished thus we may
judge from the fact that in Moissac, a city of 8,000 inhab-
itants, 200 people, including one entire family of grandfather,
grandmother, father, mother and four children, one in infancy,
were burned alive during the year 1234.

The strict Catharists were originally non-resistants, but even
the Perfected were gradually forced to take up arms against
the Inquisition and join the fugitive cavaliers, who lurked in the
caverns and forests at the foot of the Pyrenees, and often
succeeded in saving a preacher from the flames, or a maiden
of rank from the arms of some soldier of fortune. Mons6gur
still sheltered the fellow-believers of Esclarmonde in its almost
unapproachable walls, beneath which flourished Albigensian
schools, convents, hermitages and hospitals. From this
mountain-fortress came, in 1242, the avenging band who
assisted Hugo d'Alfar, bailiff of Avignonet, near Toulouse, to
slay eight inquisitors sojourning there with clubs, swords be-
ing thought too honorable. This caused the last stronghold
of free thought to be besieged by a French army, for whom
the bishop of Albi built a movable tower, which gradually
rolled nearer and nearer the ramparts,the soldiers interchanging
arrows, as the priests and preachers did anathemas. The Per-
fected gave the Consolation to their defenders as they fell beside
them, and did not refuse to aim the cross-bow or catapult.
The women, too, among them, some of high rank, kept at work
pouring down boiling oil, pitch and Greek fire. Six months of
hard fighting and labor brought the bishop's tower close to
the ramparts, and gave a part of the wall on the opposite side
into the hands of the royalists, whom some shepherds led by
night along a secret path up the precipice. Four of the Per-
fected were then chosen to drop down from the ramparts by
a rope, and make their escape through ravines and caverns,
carrying with them the treasures and traditions of the sect.
The others received the Consolation from their bishops, who
led the procession that marched out the next morning to meet
their enemies. Two hundred and five men and women were

172 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1235

burned at once without trial, though it was Holy Week,
March 12, 1244, and many more were sent to prison.

After this we hear of Albigensians only as fugitives into-
Italy, or as individual victims of the inquisition. The last
execution of note in France, that of the preacher, Pierre
Autier, who held the heresy that the resurrection-body is
merely spiritual, was in 1311 ; and other Catharists were on
trial as late as 1357. Still the sect ceased to be formidable in
France soon after the middle of the thirteenth century ; and
what is most remarkable in the subsequent records of the
inquisitors, as we shall see, is the high testimony they bear to
the morals of their victims.

In Germany we hear little of Catharism after the terrible
persecution carried on by Conrad of Marburg, who had
already made himself infamous by checking the charities and
encouraging the suicidal self-tortures of the saintly Elizabeth,
and who in 1233 sent so many innocent victims to the stake,
on no better evidence than that of the ordeal by red-hot iron,
that his assasination, like that of a kindred spirit, Droso of
Strasburg, whose familiar claimed to be able to tell heretics
by their looks, called forth such general approbation as made
heresy-hunting rather difficult.

Catharists ruled Brescia in 1225 and Viterbo still later,,
killed the bishop of Mantua in 1235, drove the inquisitors
about this time out of Piacenza, formed one-third of the popu-
lation of Florence in 1240, and flourished in Lombardy until
1259 under the protection of Eccelin the Cruel. Rome saw a
terrible Sermon or auto-da-fe in 1231, as Verona did two
years later ; and an equestrian statue was erected to the
governor of Milan, with an inscription, stating that he had
done his duty in burning the Catharists.. (Catharas ut debuit,
uxit).

The most notorious inquisitor was a Dominican named
Peter, who made himself the terror of Lombardy and then of
Florence, in which city he organized the Champions of the
Virgin, who carried red crosses on their bucklers, and on the
front of their white tunics, and who helped him send many of
the Perfected, both men and women, to the stake, and drive

1233] THE INQUISITION. 173

out their supporters, in 1245, after bloody battles in the streets.
Seven years later Peter gained his title of Martyr by being
assassinated near Como for his cruelties, as has been pictured
by Titian and other painters. Even the vigilance of the in-
quisition did not prevent Hermann, or Armanno, Pungilovo
of Ferrara, from devoting his great wealth, popularity and
energy for many years to spreading Catharism, to which he
had been won by the heroism with which he had seen one of
the Perfect perish in the flames. Pungilovo died in peace,
and was laid by crowds of mourners in the Cathedral of
Ferrara, 12G9 ; miracles were reported to take place at his
tomb ; an altar and statues arose in his memory ; and the
canons begged the pope to make the Catharist preacher a
saint. The inquisition, however, now discovered his heresy ;
but the canons would not admit it. Only after much litiga-
tion did the pope finally decide in 1301, that the putative
saint was really a heretic. So his bones were dug up and
burned, his tomb, altar, and statues broken to pieces, and his
memory cursed. The Italian city which most successfully re-
sisted the inquisition at this time was Venice, where it was
not introduced until 1289, and then kept under the control of
the Doge. Nothing is heard of Catharism in Italy after 1330.
Thus Dualism, which had organized most of the opposition
made thus far to Romanism, having successively inspired the
Gnostics, Manichaeans, Paulicians, and Catharists or
Albigenses, ceased to be formidable before the end of the
thirteenth century, and has had little subsequent influence on
European thought. It was an appeal to reason against the
Church, but the persecutions inflicted during the Middle
Ages have not been atoned for by any advocacy of
much importance in later and more enlightened
times. Reason has refused to amend the doom
which the Church pronounced on one of her first friends.
The suppression of Catharism was largely due to the liability
of the Perfected, on account of their dislike of marriage,
meat, and slaughter of animals, to detection by the inqui-
sition. But both Waldenses and Pantheists have since won
great popularity, while nothing better than neglect has en-

174 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1233

countered Dualism. The difference is largely owing to the
greater harmony of these new sects than the old one with the
Bible, but partly also to the failure of Catharism to solve the
problem of evil by speculative assumptions. Freedom from
biblical or ecclesiastical authority enabled the Albigenses to
develop several systems of thought, which existed peaceably
within its fellowship, and which all agreed in representing this
world as much less favorable to moral growth than is really
the fact. Our progress during the last five hundred years has
encouraged the hope that evil is only transitory and must
ultimately be transformed into good. Faith in the present
reign of infinite and eternal goodness has driven out the
fancy of an everlasting conflict between two hostile prin-
ciples. Those who most humbly confess the insoluble diffi-
culty of reconciling the existence of evil with a Divine
Providence must pronounce the solution offered by the
Dualists peculiarly unsatisfactory, if only on account of
the excessive asceticism which was its consistent result ; and
those who see how sacred is the duty of making themselves
and their neighbors happy here on earth can look with little
favor on any theory which would hinder this, however serv-
iceable a weapon it may have proved in the earlier battles
of the yet unended war against religious tyranny.

IV.

While the Albigenses and their protectors were being rob-
bed and murdered, first by the crusaders and then by the
inquisitors, no better fate met the Mystics, who were striving
to supplant Dualism by teaching the unity of all creatures
and things in God. Amalric of Bena, indeed, saved himself
from the stake in 1204 by recanting some propositions thought
by the University of Paris and the pope to make salvation
depend on the faith of the individual instead of the decrees
of the Church, and then died of a broken heart. In 1209,
the year of the Beziers massacre, his body was dug up and
flung into the Seine at Paris, and ten of his disciples burned
alive, for holding that the reign of the Spirit was about to

1233] THE PERSECUTION OF MYSTICISM. 175

succeed that of the Son, which is Christianity, even as this
had come in place of Judaism, the reign of the Father ; that
as the temple and synagogue had been supplanted by the
church and the Law by the Gospel, so must all visible shrines
and revelations give place to the invisible ; that the pope was
Anti-christ and would soon be dethroned by the king of
France; that heaven, purgatory and hell are merely states of
mind ; that Jesus was no more divine than any other man may
become, and no more really present in the sacramental wafer
than in other bread ; that pagan poets had the same inspira-
tion as the Church Fathers ; that salvation comes through the
inner workings of the Spirit, not through outward acts ; and
that he who is risen into the newer life can not sin. Some of
these views may have been learned by the leader, William the
Goldsmith, from Joachim. They certainly did not hinder
these martyrs from leading blameless lives, as is acknowledged
by the persecutors. David of Dinanto saved himself by
flight from the penalty of representing God alone as really
existing, but his book of Quatrains was now utterly de-
stroyed ; while the works of Erigena, Aristotle, and Aver-
roes were also condemned, though with less unfortunate
results.

This was only one wave in a great flood, for but three years
later Ortlieb, of Strasburg, was discovered to have founded a
sect whose reverence for the indwelling spirit led them to
care nothing for church sacraments or gospel history, and to
say, " There is no crucifixion but sin, or resurrection except re-
pentance." " He who converts another reveals the Father, as
the convert does the Son, and the conversion the Holy
Ghost." " Leave behind you all that is outward and follow
the Inner Voice ! Trust to that for salvation, and do not
trouble yourselves about good works ! " These Ortlibarians
suffered with some friendly Waldenses in the persecution of
1212, when five hundred heretics were arrested in Alsace, and
eighty perished in the flames, including twenty-three women
and thirteen priests. One of the latter, John, was spokes-
man, and when asked if he were willing to abide by the
ordeal of red-hot iron, answered, " Thou shalt not tempt the

176 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1233

Lord thy God." " Are you afraid of burning your finger ? "
scoffed the heresy-hunters. " Kay, I have the Word of God,
and for that I am willing to give not only my finger, but ray
whole body to be burned." Then he confessed that he and
his followers cared nothing for pictures and images, fasts,
absolutions, and masses for the dead, for the intercession of
the Virgin and the saints, or for the authority of the pope ;
and held that priests should marry and give the laity the
chalice in communion ; that sacraments avail only to the
penitent ; and that salvation is to be sought solely through
the merits of Christ. To the customary charge that their
meetings ended in debauchery, this Waldensian replied :
" How could we die, as we are about to do, if we had done
such iniquity ? " The threats of their judges and entreaties
of their brothers, sisters, wives and children were in vain.
All the eighty took their places in a deep pit, still shown in
Strasburg as the Heretics' Trench. This was filled up with
wood which was set on fire, and then the martyrs sang their
last hymn together.

The year of the butcheries of Paris and Beziers was also
that of the foundation of the Franciscans, who eagerly wel-
comed the prophecy of the coming reign of the Holy Ghost,
called themselves its destined inaugurators, and spoke of the
writings of its chief prophet, Joachim of Floris, as the Eternal
Gospel. Under this title appeared at Paris in 1254 an edition of
his writings, probably much abridged as well as interpolated,
with an Introduction, supposed to be the work of a friar
named Gerard, and announcing that this new Gospel would
take the place of those hitherto sacred, and that the kingdom
of the Spirit would be established in 12GO, when Anti-christ
would dethrone the pope, and then be himself overthrown by
an inspired emperor. The three successive reigns of Father,
Son and Holy Ghost, were said to be those of star-light, moon-
beams, and sunshine, of nettles, roses, and lilies, of slavery,
family government, and full liberty, of fear, faith, and love.
Every body at Paris read these books ; but they were soon sup-
pressed, Gerard imprisoned for life, and his friend, John of
Parma, forced to resign the generalship of the Order. The

1233] THE PERSECUTION OF MYSTICISM. 177

Introduction to the Eternal Gospel is no longer to be found,
and a consistent mystic would find it hard to believe that an
eternal gospel could be written ; for books are transitory.

Hitherto the Holy Spirit had been thought to speak mainly
through men, but the claim of woman to inspiration was now
asserted at Milan by a Bohemian visionary named Wilhelmina,
who was supposed to be the Comforter foretold by Jesus, to
be appointed to save Jews, Moslems, and unbelievers, even as
he did the Christians, and to be a new incarnation, very God
and very woman. On her death in 1281, she was believed to
have ascended into heaven, mass was said at her altar by the
spotless and beautiful English nun, Mayfred, whom she had
consecrated as pope, miracles were reported at her tomb, and
her biographers hoped to be able to supplant Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John. Not until 1301 did the inquisition succeed
in committing Mayfred with Wilhelmina's bones to the flames.

Segarelli, an insane enthusiast who tried to imitate not only
the poverty but the garb of the first disciples, and who was
burned at Parma in 1300 for asserting an individual inspira-
tion independent of the church, had founded the sect of the
Apostolic Brethren, soon to wage open war against authority
Tinder the leadership of Dolcino, the John Brown of the Mid-
dle Ages.

The most famous Mystics were those Franciscans whom,
hope of establishing the kingdom of the Spirit encouraged to
enforce strict obedience to the rule resting on the vow of
poverty, and forbidding any property to be held
either by individuals or by communities in the
Order. More politic brethren wished the rule relaxed
in favor of communities, as was actually done by
the popes soon after the death of Francis. Thus his monks
•sank, like the others, into the hypocrisy of requiring every new
brother to swear that he will live in perpetual poverty, though
he and they know that he is going to be a member of a
wealthy and luxurious community. This pious fraud, of tak-
ing a vow of poverty, while firmly intending to break it, has
been kept up for many centuries,but it was promptly condemned
by many Franciscans, like Peter John Oliva, one of the first

178 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY.

to find in the Apocalypse a prophecy of papal corruption. The
death of their patron, Pope Celestine V., in prison under Bon-
iface, 1296, greatly provoked these Mystics, soon to be cruelly
persecuted as Fratricelli.

Thus Mysticism kept showing itself in new but transitory
forms, and laying the foundations on which great organiza-
tions were ere long to rise.

v.

The persecutions described in this and the previous chapter
soon provoked such unbelief as had not been seen in the thou-
sand years since Lucian. Early in the thirteenth century a
great satire on religion appeared simultaneously in Flanders,
Germany, and France, one of the earliest authors, Pierre de
St. Cloud, having been arrested with the Mystics at Paris in
1209 and saved his life by turning monk. No blow so deadly
was struck at Christianity during the middle ages, as the
portrayal of that arch-robber, murderer, and adulterer, Rey-
nard the Fox, singing a psalm at his creation, baptising his
whelps to cure their illness, teaching the creed to the rabbit
whom he is thus able to pounce upon, turning hermit in order
to kill the chicken, at whose tomb are wrought miracles, sav-
ing himself from the gallows by going on a pilgrimage, dur-
ing which he confesses his sins to the pope and obtains
absolution, conquering the wolf in a judicial combat, and
tricking his enemies by a mock-funeral, where the ass officiates
as bishop. Every thing then held sacred : pilgrimages, prayer,
miracles, baptism, absolution, funerals, trial 'by battle,
monarchy, prelacy, and papacy itself are laughed to scorn in
this unholy bible.

And the name of Bible had already been given to two
satires, the most noted being by Guyot of Provence, a monk,
who, in 1203, declared that every crime came from Rome,
where silver was almighty, and called on all Christians to
join in destroying this nest of vermin. A troubadour of
Avignon now composed a comedy called the Heresy of the
Fathers, who were allowed to appear in public to expose the

1233] SATIRISTS AND RATIONALISTS. 179

errors of the popes. Pierre Cardinal, who was neither
Catharist nor Catholic, but said God ought to kill the devil
and not put any one into hell, denounced the Albigensian
war, which drove him into Arragon, as the victory of perfidy,
cruelty, and iniquity, over honor, love, and truth. "The
priests," he says, " call themselves shepherds, but are only
butchers, and what they dare to do, I do not dare to speak."
Figueira, who fled from Toulouse, and entered the service of
Frederic II., exclaims, " I do not wonder that men err, for
thou, O Rome, art the guide to all iniquity ! Thou for-
givest sins for money and feedest on the flesh of the simple.
No man may trust thy words ; and the devil greets thee as
his bosom-friend." One of the crusaders who drove these
minstrels into exile, Thibauld, Count of Champagne, com-
plains, " Our pope has made all the Church suffer. The
priests have left their sermons to fight and slay ; they shall
pay for it in hell."

Even German piety did not prevent Walter of the Vogel-
weide from calling Innocent III. a new Judas, who lays snares
for bishops with the help of Satan, and sets up competitors to
the crown that he may fill his coffers.

" O Father in heaven how long wilt thou sleep ?

The lord of thy treasury is only a thief ;
Thy shepherd's a wolf who devoureth thy sheep ;
Thy judge is of robbers and murderers chief ! "
(Der Roemische Stuhl in Pfiffer's, Walter von der Vogel-
weide, p. 216.)

A contemporary with the name, possibly assumed, of Frei-
dank, Free Thought, issued a collection of proverbs, exhorting
men of humble birth to make themselves noble by virtue ; and
declaring that the pope can not forgive sin, and if he could he
ought to be stoned for suffering a single mother's son to go to
hell ; that to say he can not sin himself is a lie ; that he cares
not who shears the sheep so long as he gets the wool ; and that
it is fortunate for the peace of the church that Rome is too
far away for the Germans to know what is done there. When
Frederic II. was excommunicated, Freidank declared that his

180 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1239

emperor was doing as well as be could. Then it was that
Reinmar ofZwetel, distinguished himself by praising conjugal
fidelity and the sanctity of marriage; by declaring that he alone
is truly noble whose life is pure, and that thought should be
free even from the control of the emperor ; and by denouncing
the Church in which Christ is sold a second time, the cardinals,
who are too wicked to choose a holy pope, and the papal ban
which is too much the work of anger to have come from God.
One of these loyal poets actually placed in Gregory IX.'s bed-
chamber, 1239, the prophecy of what was to come three cen-
turies later.

" Rome staggering long, through various errors led,

Shall cease to be the universal head."
" Roma diu titubans, variis erroribus acta,

Totius mundi desinet esse caput."

Meantime a mightier force than satire or Mysticism had
come into the field. Among the victims of 1209 were Aris-
totle's scientific and metaphysical works, reading which was
forbidden until 1237, as was the perusal of Averroes. From
these teachings and those of Abelard sprang the materialism
which was condemned by the bishops of Paris in 1240, 1269
and 1277. This embraced such doctrines as that what was
contrary to the Catholic faith might yet be true in philosophy
(the theory of a double truth) ; that philosophers could not as
such believe in the Trinity or the resurrection of the body ;
that Christianity hinders knowledge, and is founded like other
religions on fables ; that authority is not a sufficient reason ;
that man may be saved by mere morality ; that the world is
eternal and creation impossible ; and that human souls are
united too closely for individual immortality. The last two
propositions soon become famous as the chief errors of the
Averroists, among whom was Michael Scott, whose law of
study caused him to be charged with sorcery. So bold was the
new philosophy that Thomas Aquinas was obliged, soon after
the middle of this century to state, and try to refute, the
proposition, that miracles could not have happened, because
any violation of the order of nature would imply that God

1239] 8 A TIRISTS AND RA TIONALISTS. 181

acts against himself and that he makes the universal good give
way to that of individuals. This controversy mingled at Paris
with the endless strife about the reality of abstractions, and
the thirty years war of the University against the mendicant
friars who finally triumphed in 1259, and had previously sup-
pressed the attack on them by William of St. Amour, a pro-
fessor who argued in his Perils of the Last Times, that beggary
should no more be tolerated among the clergy than the laity.

Under such influences Roger Bacon was educated, who also
learned much from Bishop Grostete, famous for encouraging
the study of Greek in England, and for maintaining his right
to reject the pope's commands whenever they did not agree
with the teachings of the Apostles. Bacon unfortunately sup-
posed, as some people do still, that monasticism favored study,
and became a Franciscan, but his fondness for natural science,
and preference for experience rather than metaphysics as a>
way to truth soon awoke the hostility of Bonaventura, an
orthodox mystic and head of the Order ; his lectures at Ox-
ford were suspended ; and in 1257 he was imprisoned for ten
years at Paris, where he was put on bread and water when-
ever he. dared to write. Often has Mysticism shown itself thus
blind to all truth not found in its own dizzy path. Bacon was
permitted to publish in 1263 a book on the calendar, proposing
the reform made three hundred years later, of ceasing to
count years divisible by 100 and not by 400 as leap-years ;
but he had not been able to write any thing he thought import-
ant before 12G6.

Then a letter from Clement IV. prompted him to compose
his greatest work, the Opus Majus, where he complains of the
general ignorance and the lack of real knowledge, even among
famous philosophers like Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, and Alex-
ander Hales, the Franciscan, and points out the two f unda-
tal defects in all medieval and much modern scholarship,
namely, blind submission to authority, and reliance on meta-
physical reasoning instead of observation and experiment.

No one had yet shown the full value of experience as a guide
to knowledge ; and Roger Bacon was really the founder of
modern science. Again and again he insists on original in-

182 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1239

vestigation. " Would you know Aristotle or the Bible ? Don't
read translations, but study the Greek and Hebrew text
Would you understand the laws of nature ? .Don't buy books,
but get instruments and make your own experiments. Would
you be a philosopher ? First, master mathematics, for this is
the alphabet of philosophy." The Renaissance would have
come a hundred years earlier, if the rulers of the Church had
been enlightened enough to have Greek, Hebrew, mathematics,
and the sciences studied as Roger Bacon recommended. This
Great Work also contains proposals for reforming the calen-
dar ; many discoveries, for instance, of the cause of the rain-
bow, of the use of the magnifying glass, and of the fact that
the motion of light is not instantaneous ; daring criticisms on
Aristotle and the Ptolemaic system ; eloquent though fanciful
descriptions of the triumphs to be achieved by using gun-
powder, magnetism, and other forces then but imperfectly
known ; and those passages from Aristotle, Strabo, and Seneca,
which were copied by Cardinal d'Ailly, and thus inspired
Columbus to cross the ocean. Bacon unfortunately spoke of
the Vulgate version of the Bible as inaccurate, and his zeal to
bring all phenomena under the reign of law led him to ascribe
the rise and fall of religions to planetary influences, as had
been done by the Arabs, and to say that Jupiter's conjunction
with Mercury gave rise to Christianity, and that with Venus
to Islamism, while that with the moon would herald the down-
fall of all religions. Otherwise the Great Work like its sup-
plements and abridgments, the Opus Minus and Opus
Tertium sent soon after to Rome, are fully orthodox, Aver-
roism, especially the doctrine of a double truth, being vigor-
ously combated, and the pope extolled as a human god.

Clement IV. ordered the scholar's release in 1267, and five
years later he was able to publish his Compound of Philoso-
phy, or Book of the Six Sciences, an encyclopedia of philol-
ogy, mathematics, perspective, alchemy, experimental science,
and logic. It was too advanced a work to be suffered to
reach us except in fragments. Further publication of his
researches was prevented by his imprisonment a second time,
in 1278, for no immorality or heresy, but merely because he

1239] SATIRISTS AND RATIONALISTS. 183

brought forward suspicious novelties. Only the 'death, in
1292, of this new persecutor, who had finally become Pope
Nicholas IV., permitted Bacon, now nearly 80, to issue from
prison, and publish his last plea for science and protest
against authority, the Compend of Theology. That Bacon's
imprisonment for twenty-four years, because he loved science,
was really the act of the whole Church, is shown by the un-
willingness of contemporary and later authors, for instance
Dante, to mention his name, by the mutilated condition of
bis writings, said to have been nailed down to the shelves by
his brother-monks, and by the failure to publish them until
after the Reformation. When we further consider that the
thirteenth century saw Hebrew manuscripts burned by the
cart-load, reading the Bible and discussing theology forbidden
to the laity, study of civil law, chemistry, or medicine pro-
hibited to priests, dissection made criminal as soon as it was
introduced, tolerant people massacred by the thousand, and
the terrible inquisition set up to crush all freedom of thought,
we cannot wonder that Christianity has been denounced as an
enemy of knowledge.

There are no rationalistic writers in Italian until long after
1300, though many Ghibellines were free-thinkers, for in-
stance the Eccelins of Mantua, Salinguerra Torello of Ferrara,
and Farinata of Florence, who won the battle of Monte
Aperto in 1260 over his fellow-citizens, who had expelled him,
then saved the city from destruction by his own allies, and is
placed in hell beside Frederick Second as an Epicurean by
Dante. That this emperor would rise from the grave, con-
quer the Holy Land, convert the Jews, humble the priests,
destroy the monasteries, make the nuns marry, and thus bring
in the Good Time, was now prophesied by a German poet,
named after the rainbow. And it was between 1260 and 1270
that Rutebreuf made an opponent of the crusades urge that God
may be served as holily at Paris as at Jerusalem ; represented
a serf, who was shut out of heaven for poverty, as forcing
Peter and Paul to let him in, by reminding them of the denial
of Christ and martyrdom of Stephen ; and wrote a song against
the Franciscans and Dominicans full of lines like these :

184 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1239*

" Who dares the two orders disobey,

And is not willing to be their prey,

They laugh his virtues all to scorn,

And say such a villain never was born.
" Of goodnes's their sermons make a great show,

But what they practice, I do not know.

I only know they are ready to praise

The virtues of him who freely pays."

Passing on to 1288, we find the New Reynard, a satire
whose hero makes himself and his whelps masters of the four
great orders of Dominicans, Franciscans, Templars, and
Hospitallers, so that this incarnation of fraud is enthroned as
religious ruler of the world. Somewhat later, but before the end
of the century, did that popular love-poem, the Romance of
the Rose, receive a famous addition from the pen of a priest,
named Jean de Meung, from his birth-place, and from his lame-
ness, Jean Clopinel. This satirist speaks only with scorn of
women, a mob of whom once attacked him, when he saved
himself by shouting, " Let her who is most unchaste strike the
first blow ! " Equally plain is his hatred of the monks, whom
he charges with heaping up wealth in violation of their vows,
and eating up men with envy while they keep Lent all the
year. His sweeping censures do not spare even the Eternal
Gospel, and Hypocrisy is made, in one of the passages trans-
lated by Chaucer, to boast that he finds no dress so suitable as
a cowl and no servants more zealous than bishops, abbots, and
abbesses.

Jean de Meung struck against the two main props of
monasticism, as he declared marriage holier than celibacy and
labor than mendicancy. " The honor we owe to nature we
pay when we work." " Pensez de nature bien honorer, servez
la par bien laborer." Here he stood above the Church, and so
he did when he said that no man is ignoble except through
his vices, that nobleness depends on goodness of heart, and
that without such virtue high birth avails nothing.

" Nul n'est vilain f ors par ses vices,
Noblesse vient de bon courage ;

1239]

ROJAL AND POPULAR RESISTANCE.

Car gentilesse de lignage
N'est pas gentilesse qui vaille,
Si la bonti de cceur y faille."

" The Golden Age liad no kings or princes, rich or poor,
but faded away as monarchy and property were introduced;
and the first king was merely a peasant whom the rest chose
on account of his superior strength, that he might preserve
order," says this poem, which deserves its name, by being
rosy with the dawn, as is seen in its praising science, placing
the sun in the center of the system, and rebuking the fancy
that comets, meteors, and eclipses threaten harm. Thus
popular literature took up ideas, soon to establish themselves
in institutions.

VI.

In this century we find more vigorous resistance than
ever before offered to the papal anathemas. The followers of
Henry IV. and Arnold of Brescia had quailed before inter-
dicts. Prohibition of public worship in France had forced
Philip Augustus, in 1200, to leave the woman he loved for
one he hated. But we have seen that the friends of the
Albigenses cared little for the ban of the Church, and that
their deadliest foe, Simon the Catholic, openly defied it in his
greed for their spoils. Still more stubborn opposition was
made in England. Richard the Lion-hearted had died under
excommunication in 1199. John found little censure at Rome
for dismissing his wife or robbing and murdering his nephew,
but his refusal to accept the archbishop of Canterbury ap-
pointed by Innocent III., caused the latter, in 1208, to lay an
interdict upon the kingdom. The English churches were
closed for six years, not being opened even for funerals or
marriages ; church festivals were discontinued, social life was
overshadowed to an extent now incomprehensible, the sorrow
of the mourner was deepened cruelly, and the bliss of love
was disturbed by superstitious fears. But the people suffered
in silence, and most of the barons, with three of the bishops,
openly supported their godless king, who made the interdict

186 1HE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1239

an excuse for plundering the Church, a course which enabled
him to hire great bands of mercenaries. Ere long he was ex-
communicated by name, but without effect. Then his throne
was pronounced vacant and offered to Philip Augustus. Even
after this, such an army gathered together in England as
showed that a popular king might safely have defied France
as well as Rome. John's cowardice, tyranny, and licentious-
ness had alienated his subjects, and it was fear of them rather
than of Philip or Innocent that made him, in 1213, own this
pope as his liege lord, receive the archbishop, and promise to
indemnify the plundered clergy, free the priests from the
control of the courts, and let the high places in the Church be
filled by orders from Rome.

The triumph of the papacy seemed complete ; but the
people of England soon proved more formidable than the
king. A league against the royal tyranny was made by the
new archbishop, Stephen Langton, and other prelates, the
leading barons, and the citizens of London, who had now-
begun to elect their mayors. John was forced to swear at
Runnymede, on June 15,1215, that he would keep the " Great
Charter," according to which no taxes were to be levied with-
out the consent of Parliament, no one was to be punished ex-
cept by due process of law, widows and orphans were pro-
tected against spoliation, the tyranny of the barons was as
much checked as that of the monarch, and rebellion was made
legal in case the king should break his faith. To this perfidy
John was openly exhorted by Pope Innocent, who promptly
declared Magna Charta null and void, excommunicated its
supporters, and laid his interdict on the city of London. The
-citizens went on holding public worship in defiance of the
pope, and Magna Charta has never ceased to be in force. In-
nocent III.'s dislike of this great charter of liberty soon cursed
England with a horrible civil war and a French invasion ; but
her people would not suffer him to make them slaves.

Italian democracy found the popes more friendly, but only
because they were still waging against the emperors
the two hundred years war for supremacy begun by Hilde-
brand. Innocent's wish, that Germany should be ruled in his

1239] ROYAL AND POPULAR RESISTANCE. 18?

own interest, had devastated her with ten years of internecine
bloodshed before 1212, when he consented, while John was
still under excommunication, and Toulouse was resisting
Montfort's first attack, to let the empire pass under the sway
of Frederic II. This monarch's loyalty to the Church made
him take the cross for Palestine at his coronation in Aix la
. Chapelle, 1215. On receiving at Rome, five years later, the
golden diadem which fully confirmed his imperial authority,
he promised to put down heresy, to give the clergy full ex-
emption from state taxation and jurisdiction, and speedily to
head a crusade. The expedition was delayed with the papal
consent for several years, during which Frederic was restor-
ing order to his empire, and discovering who had done most
to trouble it. He kept sending men and money to Palestine,
and at last set sail thither in August, 1227, but soon returned
in consequence of a dangerous illness. The next month he
was excommunicated, without being heard, by Gregory IX.,
who had but just become pope at the age of eighty-five.
Then Frederic wrote to all the other sovereigns of Europe,
complaining of the injustice, done not only to himself, but to
John of England and Raymond of Toulouse, by the popes>
whom he calls wolves in sheep's clothing, and leeches ever
athirst for gain. This first public rebuke of the Church won
general favor ; Gregory was driven out of Rome by the citi-
zens ; the bishops, princes, and large cities of Germany,
Naples, and Sicily, remained loyal almost without exception ;
and the other Italians continued divided as before into Guelfs
and Ghibellines.

The next summer Frederic led an army into Palestine, in
spite of papal prohibition, and succeeded by his own diplo-
macy in making a treaty with the Sultan of Egypt, which
gave the Christians Jerusalem and the road thither, as well as
Bethlehem and Nazareth, for the next ten years. Thus Chris-
tianity gained possession for the last time of her sacred places,
and the first use made of them by her religious rulers was to
put them under an interdict, in consequence of the presence
of the emperor, who had won them without bloodshed, and
was on this very account cursed all the more deeply by the

188 THIS SUPPRESSION OF HERESY.

ferocious old pope. Prominent among Gregory's supporters
were the Templars, whose zeal led them to try to betray the
emperor into the hands of the Saracens. Frederic's own be-
havior was singularly mild and patient, but his tolerance to
Moslemism and sarcasms on church sacraments gave great
offense in Christendom. After crowning himself as King of
Jerusalem, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which no
other sovereign of Western Europe has entered during twelve
centuries, he returned to find Naples invaded by the papists,
armed with a false report of his death. Frederic's subjects
were so loyal, that Gregory had to consent to a peace in 1230,
when the papal ban was revoked.

Rome's unwillingness to have Germany and Italy under the
same power prevented the emperor's doing much for the
former country, but the loyalty of her free cities led him ta
sanction and increase their privileges. His real sentiments
toward popular liberty were unfriendly. The democracies of
Lombardy and Tuscany were mostly his enemies. Nor did
he give any aid to the Stedingers, those gallant peasants,
living on the marshes near Oldenburg, who began early in
this century to protect their wives and daughters against the
robber-knights by destroying the castles. A priest to whom
a Stedinger matron had given a groschen, when he expected
more, put it into her mouth instead of the communion-wafer,
and was slain by her husband, Bohlke. His friends would
not give him up ; so the whole country was put under an
interdict in 1207, at which all the priests were driven out.
Army after army of mounted and mail-clad crusaders was
now driven back by the light-armed peasants ; and it was not
until May 27, 1234, that Bohlke and his companions sank
under overwhelming numbers.

Meantime Frederic was making Naples and Sicily the most
flourishing countries in Europe. In 1231, he published his
code, establishing a strict and equable system of jurispru-
dence and taxation, to which both priests and nobles were
made amenable, ecclesiastics not being allowed to become
judges, and no special jurisdiction being left to nobility or
clergy, except that the latter could still control marriages..

1239] ROYAL AND POPULAR RESISTANCE. 189

Trial by ordeal was abolished, wages of battle and torture
narrowly restricted, private war and wearing weapons in
time of peace prohibited, practice of medicine forbidden, ex.
cept to properly educated physicians, the tools and oxen of
peasants guaranteed against seizure, female chastity protected,
and women's rights of inheritance secured. Greeks, Jews,
and Moslems were tolerated and protected by law, but the
Catharists and Waldenses were persecuted cruelly, and nearly
all driven out of Southern Italy. The shelter given to these
ascetic heretics by the Lombard and Tuscan rebels must have
been doubly distasteful to the emperor's lax morals and to his
stern despotism. Jews, and only they, were permitted to
take interest, but not more than ten per cent., and all taxes
on trade were abolished. The cities were freed from the tyr-
anny of bishops and nobles, but kept dependent on the
crown. Their representatives were twice summoned to meet
those of the clergy and nobility, but only to assist the em-
peror to levy taxes according to his own sovereign will.

Frederic II. gave special attention to practical improve-
ments, like that of the breed of horses and cattle, and intro-
duced the culture of the sugar-cane, cotton, dates, and indigo,
the latter being grown by Jews invited from Africa. The
Saracens, who had been rebels in Sicily, were transported to
Lucera in Northern Apulia, and made the most loyal of
soldiers, especially against the pope, whose mercenaries they
opposed, fighting aide by side with German crusaders, who
had just returned from Palestine and still wore the red cross.
The friendship of Moslem sovereigns enable'd Frederic to
keep a menagerie, containing an enormous elephant, a giraffe,
camels, dromedaries, lions, tigers, hyenas, rare owls and fal-
cons, etc. How well he had studied the forms and habits of
birds appears in his treatise on falconry, still extant, and con-
taining some corrections of Aristotle. This author, however,
he greatly esteemed, and had his works, with those of Aver-
roes and Avicenna, translated by Michael Scott, as well as by
Hebrew and Arab scholars. During the crusade Frederic had
asked the noted Moslem philosophers to tell him about the
eternity of the world, the immortality of the soul, and the

190 Tirfi SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1239

foundation of religion. So bold were his questions that a
Moorish rationalist said he dared not answer them, except
orally, and either to the emperor in person or to some confi-
dential messenger. The earliest Italian poetry was written
by Frederic and his courtiers ; he spoke seven languages,
Latin, Greek, Arabic, French, German, Italian, and Sicilian ;
he was well versed in diplomacy, as we have seen, and also in
mathematics ; and to him we owe the foundation of the
universities of Naples and Padua, as well as the revival and
reorganization of the great Medical School of Salerno.
Rightly was he called " The Wonder of the World," Stupor
Mundi. He was by far the most generous and enlightened
patron of knowledge in the Middle Ages. If he had been
suffered to go on preparing the way for Roger Bacon, and if
the latter had been permitted to labor in peace at Naples,
where he and scholars like him would have been glad to gather
under such patronage, the Renaissance and the Reformation
would have come at least a hundred years earlier. That all
this did not take place is mainly due to that great enemy of
light which, just before imprisoning Bacon for twenty-four
years, kept Frederic under excommunication for fourteen, and
met all his plans with a steady opposition which made them
fruitless.

Gregory Ninth's rage at seeing the clergy and laity of
Southern Italy made equal before the law, at finding Moslems
tolerated, and at being hindered from seizing on Sardinia, led
him to pronounce a second excommunication on March 20,
1239. Once more did Frederic appeal to all the kings,
princes, and prelates, protesting his loyalty to the Church,
and the injustice of his sentence by that man of blood and
patron of heresy who called himself pope. Gregory retaliated
by charging him with preferring Moslemism to Christianity,
with calling Jesus, Moses, and Mahomet, the three great im-
postors, and with asserting that nothing should be believed
which is contrary to the laws of reason and nature. These
charges were formally denied, but were probably not ground-
less. Yet Elias, the successor of Francis of Assisi, took the
emperor's side, and on being deposed for this from the gener-

1245] ROYAL AND POPULAR RESISTANCE. 191

alship of the Order, which like the Dominican, was full of
papists, excommunicated the pope ; the kings of France and
England interceded warmly for their brother monarch ; the
bishops of Bavaria trampled on the pope's letters and turned
their backs on his legate ; the archbishop of Salzburg anathe-
matized Gregory as the Anti-christ ; other German prelates
preached against him ; and the clergy and parliament of En-
gland would let no contributions be levied for the war against
Frederic. Italy and Germany took sides so generally with
the emperor that he was able to lay waste the States of the
Church up to the very gates of Rome, and prevent a hostile
council from being held there in 1241, by causing nearly a
hundred prelates to be captured by his Pisan allies, in a sea-
fight against the fleet of Genoa.

Thus he showed such a determination to resist the highest
authority in the Church, which places a general council above
even a pope, as gives him the right to a prominent place
among the champions of free thought. But thus he exposed
himself to the hatred of his pious contemporaries, especially
in France, whence had come many of the imprisoned dele-
gates. His true policy would have been to send all the pre-
lates who were his friends to the council with sufficient escort,
and then appeal against Gregory, who died soon after, at
ninety-nine.

The next pope, Innocent IV., had been the emperor's
friend, but was forced by his position to become an
enemy. After some delusive negotiations for peace, the
pontiff fled to Lyons, and there packed a council, in which,
on July 17, 1245, he declared Frederic not only excom-
municated but deposed. This assembly was so small,
and made up so generally of enemies of the emperor, that he
still found much sympathy in Germany, Venice, Switzerland,
and Sicily. It is possible that a sovereign of spotless charac-
ter, known piety, and personal popularity might have been
able to resist the authority of both pope and council, and even
to organize in these countries a new church of which the em-
peror should be the head. There is some reason to believe that
Frederic and his counselors actually discussed such a plan j

192 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1268

but it would certainly have been frustrated by the general
knowledge of his irreligion, perfidy, cruelty, profligacy, and
hostility to political freedom. His contemporary, Saint Louis
of France, was able to oppose the pope successfully, as we
shall see ; but only saints could do so in that superstitious
century. The five years of Frederic's life after his deposition
were so full of desertions and defeats, that his cause had evi-
dently become hopeless. All his talents and titles did not pre-
vent his vices from making him too weak for reforming, or
even for resisting the Church. No one had been so free from
superstition for nearly a thousand years ; but this independ-
ence seems to have co-operated with his exalted position and
despotic character in making him insensible to the pressure of
public opinion in favor of morality. He was in all proba-
bility a free-thinker, despite his constant protestations of or-
thodoxy, but the historian of free thought must hesitate
about including him among her martyrs, though he certainly
deserves a place among her champions.

His son Conrad could not maintain himself as emperor ; but
Manfred, though but eighteen at the death of his father,
whom the ban of the Church had prevented from marrying
his mother, ruled Southern Italy with great skill, courage and
success. Innocent IV. tried to sell Naples and Sicily to the
earl of Cornwall, who replied, " The pope might as well ask
me to buy the moon of him." This nobleman's brother, King
Henry III., was anxious to make the purchase for his son
Prince Edward, but Parliament refused the money. Finally,
Charles of Anjou was persuaded by Bacon's patron, Clement
IV., to seize on a kingdom to which neither of them had the
slightest claim. Manfred was defeated and slain at Bene-
vento, February 20, 126G, and denied burial by the pope, who
suffered Frederic's grandson, Conradin, to be beheaded as a
criminal on October 29, 1268, for trying to recover his inher-
itance from an usurper in honorable warfare. Thus died the
last of the Hohenstaufen, who for more than a century had
maintained the authority of the empire against the papacy.
The war between pope and emperor seemed ended in the su-
premacy of the Church. Sicily freed herself from her tyrants,

1268] ROYAL AND POPULAR RESISTANCE. 193

whom the popes permitted to abuse her women without re-
straint, by that bloody, popular uprising, the Sicilian Vespers,
March 31, 1282 ; and the pope's refusal to let the island be-
come a republic under his protection only resulted in the estab-
lishment of the dominion of Arragon. Naples, Tuscany,
Lombardy, and Germany remained under the rule of sover-
eigns friendly to the papal power ; and the States of the
Church were extended over Ravenna, Ferrara and Bologna by
Nicholas III., who taught the Franciscans how to hold vast
wealth while professing poverty.

- The accession of the docile and bigoted Hapsburgs to the
imperial throne was preceded by an interregnum of twenty
years, which gave the German cities a grand opportunity to
extend their liberties. To do this, Cologne and Aix-la-
Chapelle had to conquer their archbishop in pitched battle and
keep him for two or three years in an iron cage, despite a
papal interdict. Liege, Strasburg, Augsburg, and Wtirzburg
were equally successful in making war against their bishops ;
and a great league of sixty Rhenish and Swabian towns suc-
ceeded in keeping in check, not only the prelates, but the rob-
ber knights. There were eighty of the cities of Northern
Germany in the Hanseatic League, which was fully organized
in 1268, and had previously conquered the king of Denmark,
in spite of his support from Innocent III.

Among other popular movements destined henceforth to
be often imitated, may be mentioned the great revolt in 1251
of the Shepherds in France. These peasants marched from
Flanders to Marseilles, under a leader who called himself the
Master of Hungary, and was possibly a Catharist, slaughter-
ing the monks and priests, and administering the sacraments
to all who wished them. More permanent opposition to Rome
had already been organized by the French barons who, after
Frederic's excommunication in the council of Lyons, 1246,
formed a league to resist every ecclesiastical anathema pro-
nounced unjust by their own leaders, one of whom, the duke
of Brittany, was nicknamed, on account of his hatred of the
clergy, Mauclerc. Six years later, Queen Blanche, who had
sent out the last crusade against Toulouse, on hearing that the

194 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY [1268

canons of Notre Dame had imprisoned their serfs for not
paying taxes, and punished the complaints of the men to the
crown by shutting up the women and children also, led her
soldiers to the dungeon, smote with her own hand against the
gates to encourage her men to break them open, and then de-
clared all the rescued peasants free. Her son, not unjustly
called Saint Louis, forbade laymen to use any argument ex-
cept the sword against unbelievers, and ordered all debtors to
the Jews to repudiate their debts for the good of their souls.
Yet even he, shortly before departing for the crusade in which
he perished, enacted the Pragmatic Sanction of 1268, accord-
ing to which no prelate could be appointed, or money collected
in France by any pope without the consent of her king and
bishops. So strong was Louis through his piety and virtue,,
that neither the pope nor his people showed any displeasure at
this great blow to papal tyranny.

Even Denmark felt something of the new spirit, and we
find Christopher I. imprisoning the archbishop of Lund for
disloyalty in 1257, and successfully resisting an interdict until
it was taken off by the pope ; so that the prelate had to resort
to poison to overcome his monarch.

In England, Magna Charta was maintained against kings
and popes, and the exactions of these potentates sternly
resisted. Parliament refused to help conquer Sicily in 1255 ;.
and the bishop of London, on being threatened with deposi-
tion for prohibiting contributions for Rome in his diocese,
said to the king, " If your pope takes off my miter, I shall put
on my helmet." Robert Grostete, bishop of Lincoln, and an
early patron of Roger Bacon, took the lead in resisting the
intrusion of unfit foreigners into English benefices, and so far
anticipated the Reformation as to declare openly, that only
such mandates as were in accordance with the New Testament
should be regarded as issued by a successor of the Apostles.

The main war for liberty was waged against Henry III. ;
and what was called, from its audacity, the Mad Parliament of
1258, undertook to place the power in the hands of a commit-
tee of barons, leaving the king only the name of sovereignty.
A wiser step then taken was that confirmation of Magna

1207] ROYAL AND POPULAR RESISTANCE. 195

Charta called the Provisions of Oxford, the leader in gaining
which was Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester and younger
son of the usurper of Beziers and Toulouse. The pope forbade
Henry III. to keep his oath to his subjects, and encouraged
him, as did Louis of France, to raise a great army, which was-
totally defeated at Lewes, Sussex, May 14, 1264, by Leicester,
whose soldiers wore white crosses on breast and back. Among
the prisoners were King Henry, Cornwall, and Prince Ed-
ward, who had fought with reckless fury against the London-
ers. This victory led to the supremacy of the committee of
barons, to uphold whom Leicester arranged for frequent ses-
sions of parliament, and made it, for the first time in English
history, contain representatives of the cities as well as of the
landed gentry. That famous despoiler of the monks, Robin
Hood, is said by Scotch chroniclers to have been among these
patriots. They paid no attention to the pope's bull of ex-
communication, except to have it torn up at Dover, so that it
could not be published in England. Prince Edward soon
escaped from captivity, gathered an army of royalists, sur-
prised part of the rebel force at Kenil worth, and totally de-
feated the main body at Evesham, near by, on August 4, 1265,
when Leicester fell, fighting so desperately that the minstrels
said he would have saved the day, if he had had six men like
himself.

Liberty was too strong in England to be suppressed by
royal victories or papal anathemas. Scarcely had the prince
who won Evesham mounted the throne when the cities sent
their representatives to parliament, as they have done ever
since, the Statutes of Westminster were enacted in 1275 as
safeguards against oppression, and the great Covenant of
Freedom was solemnly and finally confirmed in 1297 by this
king, who showed himself during his long reign the patron of
the liberty against which he had fought as his father's cham-
pion.

Despite some slight checks, among which may be mentioned
the failure of Boniface VIII. to establish, in 1296, by his bull
de Clericis Laicos the exemption of the clergy from a taxa-
tion on which the kings of France and England insisted, the

196 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1300

papal power was still at its height in 1300, when this pope, who
had won his tiara by frightening the superstitious Celestine
V. into abdication, and had but just suppressed with pitiless
cruelty the opposition of the Colonnas headed by two cardi-
nals, invited all Christians but his own enemies to visit Rome,
and thus gain plenary indulgence. The whole number who
sought remission of their sins is estimated at two millions ;
and the contributions were enormoust So extravagant were
the claims to political sovereignty now made by Boniface, that
he is said to have appeared in public, during this first of papal
jubilees, with the imperial sword, orb, scepter, and diadem,
but this is probably a myth. There is good reason to believe
that he did add a second crown to the single one hitherto worn
in the tiara. The next chapter will tell how high his preten-
sions really were, and how successfully they were resisted in
the first great victory over papal Rome.

VII.

In relating the destruction of Catharism, the crusades
against the Languedocians and Stedingers, the first atrocities
of the inquisition, the persecution of the early Mystics, the
discoveries and imprisonment of Bacon, the appearance of the
Reynard satires and other anti-papal poems, the humiliation of
King John, the establishment of Magna Charta, the fall of the
Ilohenstaufen, the uprising of Sicily, and the growth of liberty
in Germany, it has been necessary to pass through the century
four times. So it will be well to look at the chronological re-
lations of these events.

The first great work which was then undertaken by the
church was the destruction of the heresy of the Albigenses or
Catharists. {"or this end we see the crusaders massacre all
the people of Beziers in 1209, when King John has brought
England under an interdict, when the Stedingers have been
for two years under the ban, when the Parisian Mystics are
being led to the stake, after trial, in company with one of the
authors of Reynard, and when Walter von der Vogelwoide
is denouncing Innocent III. for plundering Germany, and

1300] SUMMARY. 197

keeping her in civil war. The crusaders Keep on devastating
Languedoc, and the ban darkening all social life in England ;
the Mystics of Strasburg, among whom are many Waldenses,
are burned in 1212, and this year brings Frederic the Second
to Germany, where he makes himself emperor with the papal
approval. The next year sees the abject submission of King
John, and the total rout of the protectors of the Albigenses at
Muret. Then, in 1215, Magna Charta is extorted from John,
despite papal interference, and the Lateran council, composed
of fifteen hundred dignitaries of the church, sanctions the de-
thronement of the Languedocian princes as a punishment for
their tolerance, greatly to the indignation of Pierre Cardinal,
Figueira, and other troubadours. Next follow the wars of
the disinherited Languedocians to recover their lands from
Montfort, and of the English patriots against King John,
who is sustained by the pope in the breach of his promise to
observe Magna Charta. Frederic is now busy restoring order
and encouraging learning, too busy to fulfill his vow of lead-
ing a crusade. This delay brings him under the ban, but in
1228, when the king of France subdues Languedoc and so
closes the twenty years' war, the excommunicated Emperor
goes to Palestine, despite papal prohibition, and throws Jeru-
salem open to Christendom by treaty, greatly to the anger of
Gregory IX., whose violence and injustice are openly blamed,
not only by kings and prelates, but by Freidank, Rein mar,
and other minnesingers. Frederic is soon freed from the ban
but the check given to clerical pretensions by his Sicilian code
keeps alive the hatred of the pope. In 1233 the Inquisition
opens its career of havoc, in Languedoc, Italy and Germany,
and continues to check freedom of thought throughout the
century, though somewhat impeded by assassinations and
popular insurrections, the slaying of Conrad of Marburg in
this year having a peculiarly good effect.

Frederic is excommunicated again in 1239, saves himself
from dethronement at a council by the unpopular step of
imprisoning its members, falls under this doom six years
later, finds his vices make him weak before the pope, and at
his death in 1250, leaves his dynasty unable to maintain itself,

198 THE SUPPRESSION OF HERESY. [1300

so that after two hundred years of struggle for supremacy,
the papacy gains a temporary victory over the empire. Mean-
time that daring form of anti-christian skepticism, after-
wards known as Averroism, has been discovered in Paris in
1240.

Monsegur, the last fortress of the Albigenses, has been de-
stroyed in 1244, and they have suffered terrible persecutions in
both France and Italy, in the former of which countries the un-
successful revolt of the Shepherds maybe ascribed to their in-
stigation. The Dualist heresy, which has maintained itself in
various shapes ever since the first century, ceases to be for-
midable about the middle of the thirteenth, and falls into an
oblivion, revival from which is prevented by its falsity. This
simultaneous triumph over Catharists and Hohenstaufen is
the great event of the period.

The latter half of "the century shows no such brilliant victo-
ries of the papacy, but no serious defeats. Only concealment
saves the Waldenses from extermination, and the pantheistic
Mystics find themselves unable either to inaugurate the reign
of the Holy Ghost now prophesied in the Eternal Gospel, or
to raise woman to the priesthood instead of man. Vainly do
the polemics of William de St. Amour, and the satires of
Ruteboeuf assail the corruptions of the mendicant friars,
whom the popes permit to hold property in violation of their
vow of poverty, a pious fraud still kept up. The progress of
constitutional liberty in England is temporarily checked by
the defeat and death at Evesham in 1265, of the son and
namesake of the Languedocian tyrant, Simon de Montfort.
The next year, Roger Bacon, who has been nearly ten years
in prison because he loves science, writes his great work, and
Frederic's gallant son, Manfred, is defeated and slain by the
French, whom the pope has tempted into invading Naples.
Conradin, last of the Hohenstaufen, mounts the scaffold for
trying to recover his inheritance, in 1268, when the exactions
of the popes in France are checked by the Pragmatic Sanc-
tion, whose author, St. Louis, owes his success in resisting
Rome to his character, as Frederic does his defeat ; and the
same year sees the Hanseatic League fully formed, while the

1300] SUMMARY. 199

interregnum of twenty years, previous to the accession of the
Plapsburgs in 1273, enables the German cities generally to en-
large their liberties, despite the anathemas and bloody at-
tacks of their prelates, one of whom has to be kept in an iron
cage, from which the pope's interdict can not set him free.
That great popular revolt, the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, takes
place during the second imprisonment of Bacon, which was
the penalty for eleven years of most fruitful liberty. His
death, after passing twenty-four years in all in captivity, may
be placed in 1294, the year of the accession of Boniface VIIL,
and it was about this time that Jean de Meung, author of the
latter part of the Romaunt of the Rose, gave such praise to
marriage and manual labor as had not been heard in Chris-
tendom. The final and cordial confirmation of Magna Charta
by Edward I. is the great event near the close of the century,
though 1300 sees the celebration of the first papal jubilee, and
the burning of Segarelli, whose follower, Dolcino, we shall
soon find famous.

The great victories of the papacy, not only over monarchs,
but over heresies, had given it such a prestige, and the power
of superstition over the common people was still so great, that
the cause of freedom of thought must have now seemed al-
most hopeless to its champions. They had measured their
strength, and had been defeated. All honor to those who
kept on fighting still.

CHAPTER VII.

THE REVOLT OF FEANCE AND GERMANY IN THE FOURTEENTH

CENTUBY.

The conquest of the Catharists and the Hohenstaufen left
no powerful organization among the heretics, and no hostile
dynasty on the throne ; but bitter memories remained
of the massacres at Beziers and Lavaur, the perfidy
against the Languedocian princes, the opposition to the
peaceful acquisition of Jerusalem, and the execution of
Conradin. England had not forgotten the interdict on her
innocent people, the deposition of her king, or the anathemas
against Magna Charta, while much offense had been but re-
cently given by the pope's supporting Wallace. There was gen-
eral sympathy, both in Italy and in Spain, with the Sicilians
struggling against the French, whom Rome had invited to in-
vade the island more than thirty years before, and still upheld.
The cruelty and rapacity of the inquisition called forth ever in-
creasing indignation, and the persecuted Mystics and Waldenses
found many friends to pity them. Even the most zealous Cath-
olics blamed Boniface VIII. for causing the abdication and
hastening the death of his predecessor, for an unprecedented
stretch of authority in deposing cardinals, and for his greedy
and unjust exactions. His recent use of the papal title, in pro-
nouncing a judgment which he had promised to render merely in
his private capacity between France and England, gave great
offense to the king and nobles of the former kingdom. And his
attempt to have the clergy exempted from taxation had called
forth successful resistance in both these countries, as already
mentioned. The irritation thus excited was much increased
by the circulation of Reynard the Fox, the Romaunt of the
Rose, the songs of Walter Map, Walter von der Vogelweide,

1301] PHILIP AND BOJSIFACE. . 201

Pierre Cardinal, Figueira, Freidank, and Ruteboeuf. Educa-
tion was slowly advancing and the imprisonment of Bacon
and burning of Aristotle and the Talmud had shown who was
most hostile to knowledge. Thus the fourteenth century found
the Romish Church apparently omnipotent but full of secret
enemies, a mighty tree bearing all manner of fruit, both useful
and poisonous, spreading its dense shadow over all thought,
but rotten at the core. Her weakness was soon exposed by one
of the royal line which hitherto had been most faithful.

ii.

Philip the Fair, who ruled France from 1285 to 1314, made
himself an absolute monarch, and this involved a battle with
Pope Boniface. Not only did the latter claim authority to
judge the actions, blame the faults, and take away the crowns
of kings, but he controlled the appointment of bishops, regu-
lated the portion of the state taxes to be paid by the clergy
on their enormous estates, and exercised unlimited and imme-
diate authority without check from king or bishop over the
monastic orders, one of which, that of the Templars, owned a
third part of Paris, and kept up such a standing army as could
easily have overturned any throne in Europe ; their horsemen
alone numbering 15,000. When we further consider that the
churches and monasteries were rapidly growing in wealth,
that these buildings were open as asylums, not only to crimi-
nals but to insolvent debtors, that monks and priests we^e still
exempt from secular jurisdiction in France, that here, as else-
where in Europe, the inquisition was hunting down and burn-
ing up heretics without any control from the bishops or the
king's judges, and that excommunication called down legal pen-
alties on those who remained for twelve months under the ban,
we see that the pope must be checked before the king could
become absolute, or the kingdom made independent of foreign
qpntrol. Hitherto Europe had been a family of nations under
the Holy Father at Rome. The time had come for each coun-
try to have her own independent government. The pope who
resisted this inevitable progress did so to his own destruction.

202 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1301

Boniface VIII. kept for awhile on good terms with Philip,
by permitting him to control the election of bishops and abbots,
to restrict the right of asylum, to check the growth of Church
property, and to submit it to heavy and steady taxation. Some
attempt was made before the end of the thirteenth century to
interfere with this last procedure, but ineffectually, as has been
mentioned. Only by strong protest was the pope able to keep
the king from permanently cutting off all supply of money to
Rome from France. No opposition was made to the edict
issued by Philip in 1301,censuring the Dominicans for condemn-
ing innocent people in order to get possession of their property,
and commanding that the bishops and also the royal senes-
chals should control the management of the local inquisitions.
This wise monarch had all the cases of imprisonment on re-
ligious charges examined by his own commissioners in 1304.
(Lamothe-Langon, vol. iii., p.p. 14-25). To this supervision
may be attributed the comparative leniency of the sentences
published by Limborch, who, according to Maitland, gives the
results of fifteen Sermons, as they were called from the intro-
ductory discourse, at Toulouse, Carcassonne and neighboring
towns between 1307 and 1323, at only forty executions among
over six hundred culprits, of whom five hundred were
Albigenses and nearly one hundred Waldenses, and a few
Pantheists. About one fourth of the culprits was released,
and false accusers received heavy punishment. Scarcely any
immorality was brought to light among these heretics except
the Albigensian endura, or practice of hastening the end of
sick people and prisoners who had received the Consolation,
and might be tortured into recantation or betrayal of their
brethren.

Among these martyrs for an almost obsolete heresy we get
a glimpse of one of the dimly enlightened pioneers of the
.scientific method of thought, Pietro of Abano, a physician
who had doubts about the raising of Lazarus, and who was
twice brought before the inquisition on the inconsistent chargfp
of not believing in devils, and of keeping them in a bottle.
The first time he was freed by Philip, and his death during
the second trial saved him from the flames, to which, owing to

1301] PHILIP AND BONIFACE. 203

the shrewdness of his maid-servant, Marietta, the Dominicans
were not able to send even his body.

The tolerance of Philip, whose real views about religion
remain a mystery, gave less offense at Home than his plunder-
ing the Church. In 1301 the complaints of the archbishops
of Narbonne and Rheims against the King's rapacity caused
one of his most dissolute and disloyal subjects, the bishop of
Pamiers, to be sent to him as legate by Boniface. The envoy
was arrested as a traitor, and his seizure justified at Rome by
one of the new men destined to dethrone popes, and kings also,
a low-born, one-eyed lawyer, Pierre Flotte, who, when Boni-
face boasted of his supremacy, answered, " Your power is a
word; my master's is a reality ! " So it turned out to be on
the publication of the bull, Ausculta Fill, in which the pope
claimed authority, like Jeremiah's (Chapter i., verse 10),
" over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out and to pull
down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build and to
plant," told the king it would be folly for him to deny his
subjection to the Head of the Church, reprimanded him, not
only for plundering ecclesiastics, but for debasing the coin
and otherwise oppressing his subjects, and summoned him to
appear in person or by his ambassadors before a council of
•prelates at Rome. This bull Philip had publicly burned before
a great crowd collected by the blast of trumpets at Paris, on
Sunday, February 11, 1302. The nobility, clergy, and repre-
sentatives of the people of France were called together for the
first time in her history, and at this meeting of the States
General in Notre Dame, April 10, the king was sustained
unanimously. So little respect was then paid to honesty that
Philip published a forged bull, wherein the pope was made to
claim political supremacy, with a reply, saying, " Let your
great foolishness know that we are subject to no one in poli-
tics." These two letters were produced before the Assembly,
to which the king also pretended that the pope had tried to
make him his vassal. These charges were grossly unjust, for
Boniface had not claimed that all political sovereignty be-
longed to him, but only that it ought all to be exercised in
conformity with religious principles, of which he was the

204 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMAN J. [130£

acknowledged interpreter. Imprudent as even this claim
turned out to be, it was not inconsistent. The moral law is
no respecter of persons ; if the pope is empowered to enforce
it, he is solemnly bound to pass judgment on all the actions of
kings toward their subjects. Philip's position, that the pope's
authority extended only to spiritual but not to temporal mat-
ters, really amounted to a denial that this rule had any exist-
ence, except over those who submitted voluntarily. Thus the
real meaning of the burning of the bull and the approval of
the States General was that France, as a nation, was no longer
subject to the pope. His control over individuals still con-
tinued, but was much restricted by the repeal this year (1302)
of the royal ordinance imposing legal penalties on the excom-
municated, as well as by the salutary check now given, as
described, to the inquisition, and by the command that no-
French prelate should attend the council at Rome.

Only four of the nine archbishops of Fran/ce were present
at this assembly, with whose approval Boniface sent out, on
November 18th, his bull, Unam Sanctam, wherein, on the
authority of the text of Jeremiah just quoted, as well
as of Paul's declaration to the Corinthians (1 Cor., chap.
ii., verse 15): "He that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet be
himself is judged of no man," it was asserted that " There
are two swords, the spiritual and the temporal, and both be-
long to the Church. The former she holds herself, but the
latter she allows to be wielded by kings, though only accord-
ing to her own order and permission. The political authority
is subject to the religious, every human being ought to obey
the pope, and belief in this truth is necessary for salvation.'*

Philip replied by calling his nobility, clergy, and lawyers
together on March 12, 1303, and presenting, through William
de Nogaret, a jurist of Albigensian descent, formal charges
that Boniface was not a legitimate pope, that he had mur-
dered his predecessor, and that he had been guilty of heresy,,
simony, sorcery, and all kinds of impurity. These charges,
whose truth we shall consider latei, were also stated to the
people of Paris in the pulpit. An assembly, containing five
archbishops, twenty-one. bishops, several of the principal ab-

1303] PHILIP AND BONIFACE. 205

bots, and most of the great barons, voted that a general
council should meet in France to decide on the guilt of Pope
Boniface, and that meantime his bulls and anathemas should
be utterly disregarded. Appeal from his wrath was solemnly
made to the future council and the new pope there to be
chosen. To these proceedings 700 certificates of approval
were obtained from absent prelates and religious societies, the
refusals being very few. Among the King's champions was
William of Ockham, soon to become famous in the revolt
of Germany, and Pierre Dubois, who urged Philip to abolish
not only the temporal power of the pope, but the celibacy of
the clergy, and who is also memorable for advocating the
education of women. (JRevue des Deux Mondes, 1871,
March 1, esp. pp. 94, 113.)

Boniface now began to issue anathemas, but his messengers
were thrown into prison. At last he prepared to excommuni-
cate King Philip in a bull to be published on Sunday,
September 8th, at Anagni, the pope's birth-place and
summer residence. William de Nogaret had gone
to Italy, with full powers to act for his master, and
with him was a brother of one of the deposed Colonna
cardinals, who was surnamed Sciarra, or Quarrel, from his
fierceness, which had led him, when captured by corsairs after
the fall of Palestrina, to work for four years as a
galley-slave, rather than avow his rank, and so run the risk of
being sold to his Holy Father, the pope. These enemies of
Boniface found allies even in his birth-place, and gathered
mercenaries by offering the plunder of his treasures. Early
on September 7th, the day before Philip was to be excom-
municated, 300 soldiers headed by Nogaret and Sciarra
Colonna rushed into Anagni, shouting, " Long live the king
of France ! Death to the pope ! " Many citizens joined
them, the pope found few defenders, and most of his car-
dinals fled. There was fighting in the streets, an archbishop
was slain, and the cathedral was plundered and set on fire.
That Saturday evening the pope's palace was broken
open, and Boniface, then over eighty, was found, sitting on
his throne, wearing his tiara and papal mantle, holding the

206 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1308

crucifix and keys of Saint Peter, and with a cardinal standing
on either side. Nogaret and Colonna told him he must
summon a council at Lyons, but he answered : " Behold my
neck ! Behold my head ! I rejoice at insults from the son
of heretics." Nogaret only told him he should soon be de-
posed, and checked Sciarra who would have smitten the pope's
face with his gauntlet. Sunday Boniface spent in captivity,
refusing to eat or drink, and protesting that he should never
yield. Meantime, the soldiers plundered his treasures, said to
have been richer than those of all the kings. Booty
enough they found to make them ready to disperse on Mon-
day morning, when the citizens rose to deliver their pope»
He returned to Rome, but soon died there, actually a prisoner
in the Vatican, where he was confined by his own cardinals,
to whom his despotism had become unendurable.

It was fortunate for Philip, as well as for liberty of thought,
that the successor of Boniface did not realize how much the
authority of the Church was endangered by this virtual de-
thronement of a pope, and take advantage of the general
sympathy, expressed even by personal enemies like Dante, to
lay an interdict on France, depose her king, invite England,
Flanders and Germany, who had long been at war with him,
to invade his realm, and call on the Franciscans and Domini-
cans to preach, and the Templars to lead the crusade. Public
opinion was not yet too enlightened for this, but Benedict XI.
was too meek. He had been one of the two cardinals who
alone were faithful at Anagni, but he thought only of making
peace with as little disgrace to the Church as possible, and
waited for seven months before even excommunicating
Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna. His death soon after was fol-
lowed by nearly a year's interregnum, and the next pope,
Clement V. hitherto a zealous follower of Boniface, had at
last found out that the Church was losing ground. All his
actions favor the story, that he bought the tiara by selling
himself to France, but the particulars of the bargain are be-
yond our reach. He showed his subjection by letting
his coronation take place at Lyons, November 14, 1305, and
thenceforth residing in France, until, after ruining every pre-

1305] PHILIP AND BONIFACE. 207

late willing to entertain him, he established himself in 1309
at Avignon, which as was charged by Petrarch and is con-
fessed by modern Romanists, soon became one of the most
licentious and irreligious cities in Christendom. For more
than seventy years there was no pope at Rome, except for
one brief visit, and this period is justly called the Babylonish
captivity. The king was at once restored, without even a.
show of penitence, to full fellowship in the church ; his
accomplices at Anagni obtained pardon on the easiest terms ;
the bulls, Ausculta Fill and Unam Sanctam were declared
inapplicable to France ; and Clement had not been a year at
Avignon, when he suffered the worst of charges to be openly
presented there against Pope Boniface. That the latter had
hastened the death of Celestine V., sold the high places in the
church, and indulged in adultery and even grosser licentious-
ness, was strongly attested, and is not intrinsically incredible ;
but his reign was stained by no scandal like the intercourse of
Clement with the Countess of Perigord. That a pope who
cared so much for power as Boniface, should have struck at its
foundations by openly avowing his disbelief in the Trinity,
the Virgin, immortality, the inspiration of Christ, and
transubstantiation is altogether unlikely. The testimony on
these points seems very strong, but it may be attributed either
to mystical zealots who had misunderstood their adversary in
the heat of controversy, or to time-servers who had sold
themselves to Philip. He had been a zealous student of the
Bible and the Decretals, before his accession, and his courage
at Anagni shows no lack of faith in the creed on which he
stood. All Christendom shuddered as Philip urged that Pope
Boniface should be condemned as a heretic and a malefactor,
his acts annulled, and his body dug up and burned. The
claim of apostolic succession and papal infallibility was al-
most given up by Clement V., when he issued his bull, of
April 23, 1311, praising the king's righteous though mis-
guided zeal and referring the greal scandal to the decision of
the council of Yienne, which met that October,
and, while formally acquitting Boniface, really condemned
him by forbearing to censure any of his assailants. When we

208 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1807

consider these facts, and also that at this very council, on
April 3, 1312, Philip forced his pontifical puppet to disband
the most trusty and mighty army in the papal service, and
that the despot had already seized on its possessions, tortured
many of its members into charging it with heresy, blasphemy,
and obscenity, and sent others to the stake for protesting its
innocence, we see that we have reached a new period in our
history. Free thought has no longer to dread an omnipotent
Church, secular interests begin to outweigh religious, and
kings are mightier than popes.

in.

But were these martyrs free-thinkers? Was there any
heresy in the Temple ? These are difficult questions on
which the best authorities are at variance. The following
facts are the most important :

Up to Friday, October 13, 1307, when all the Templars in
France were suddenly arrested at day break, the Order had
the best of reputations for orthodoxy. Its knights had fought
fiercely against the Moslems, opposed Frederic II. in Palestine,
and stood almost alone among Frenchmen in support of Boni-
face. They had refused to pay taxes to Philip, and tried to
recover money he had borrowed. This monarch, who was
making himself absolute found an army which paid him no
allegiance or tribute, garrisoning his cities. Their claim to
be subject only to the pope did not prevent their arrest by
the king's officers, and torture by the inquisitors, who soon
brought many to confess charges, already made by two crimi-
nals, who had once been Templars, to the effect that novices
were compelled to deny Christ, spit on the cross, give obscene
kisses, worship idols, and promise, if priests, to omit from the
mass the proof text for transubstantiation, " This is my
body," and were then authorized to commit the sin of Sodom.
These avowals were produced by tortures, under which thirty-
six prisoners perished in Paris alone. The Grand Master,
however, made a confession of his own accord before the
clergy of Paris, if we may trust the bull issued on November

1307] THE TEMPLARS. 209

22, 1307, by Clement V., who also claimed to have received
private information from a Templar of high rank, formerly
compelled to deny Christ by the Head of the Order. This
bull caused the arrest of the knights in Great Britain, Spain,
Italy, Cyprus, and other countries, but few confessions were
made, except in France. There the States General declared
unanimously on May 1, 1308, the guilt of the Order, as on
August 12 did the pope, now actually a prisoner in France.

This bull, called Faciens Misericordiam, secured a final
bearing in Paris, of which the records have been published
by Michelet. Nine judges, mostly prelates, sat from August
1309, to May, 1311, and heard 231 witnesses. Most of the
Templars at first wished to defend the Order, and many pro-
tested they had been tortured into making false confessions.
On May 10, 1310, fifty-four who had thus retracted were
burned at Paris as relapsed heretics by the king and archbishop.
Similar executions took place all over France, each martyr
being offered his life and liberty if he would testify against
the Order, and each one preferring to die in its defense.
Those who had never confessed any thing were sentenced to
imprisonment for life. No wonder that confessions became
numerous. More than 150 witnesses now said that imme-
diately, or a few days or months after their reception, they had
been driven by threats of death or imprisonment to deny God
or Christ. Those who persisted in refusing were not harmed,
one being told, rt No matter. It is only a joke." They were
also, they said, required to spit, or in some cases to tread, on
the cross, which is variously described as plain, or bearing the
Christ, as a large one from the altar, or a small one carried in
the hand, as of wood or metal, as carved on the stone floor, as
painted in a book, or on a desk, as that worn on the mantle,
as a smaller one in cloth, as made of sticks, or of straws.
Most of the witnesses finally spat near the cross ; but some
would not do even this. About half of them were asked to
give obscene kisses, but many refused, and none were com-
pelled. There was the same proportion of testimony to the
permission of grosser impurity, but not always from the same
people who had been asked for kisses ; and all the witnesses

210 REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1307

declared tbat very few such sins really took place in the
Order. The testimony about the transubstantiation text is
very scanty, and it evidently was never omitted during wor-
ship. A few witnesses spoke of idols, but contradictorily and
otherwise incredibly. Several bad been told after these dis-
gusting performances, that it was all a joke, and one was only
prevented by this assurance from leaving the Order (Proems
des Templiers, vol. i., p. 510). Secresy was always enjoined,
but most of the witnesses had confessed, usually to Francis-
cans, and easily got absolution. The general testimony is that
the alleged occurrences were not common. Usually only the
initiator and neophyte were present at the denial, and in no
case was this preceded or followed by any heretical in-
struction.

It is especially to be noticed that no attempt was made by
the prosecutors to show any influence from Mystics, Waldenses,.
Catharists, or followers of Arnold, Abelard, Berengar, Manes,
Pelagius, Sabellius, Arius, or any other heresiarch ; and na
heretical book by any Templar has ever been brought to light.
When a general council met at Vienne, near Lyons, in Octo-
ber, 1311, to determine the fate of the Order, nine of its
knights appeared as .ambassadors from nearly two thousand
others, who were ready to testify in its defense. Most of the
three hundred prelates wished to hear these envoys, but the
pope threw them into a prison from which they never issued,
and adjourned the council for five months, during which the
king came with troops to his support. Then, on April 3, 1312,
Clement announced to the council that he had concluded to
abolish with their approbation the Order, not because it had
been fully proved guilty, but because this was most expedient.
No further protest was made at Vienne, where the violence
of Philip against both the Templars and Boniface, as well as
the cowardice of Clement, were fully realized. The local
councils of Ravenna, Mainz, Treves, Tarragona, and Sala-
manca declared the Order innocent, and in Spain and Portugal
it was kept up under new names. No Templar was executed
out of France. Most of the members joined other fraternities
or returned to the world. The Grand Master, de Molay, on

1307] THE TEMPLARS. 211

being brought before the people of Paris, with three more of
the dignitaries to receive sentence of imprisonment for Jife,
protested that there was no vice or heresy in the Temple, and
that he deserved to die for having been persuaded by the
king and pope into bearing false witness. Guy of Auvergne
spoke out also, and both were burned that very evening,
March 11, 1313, by Philip's orders, in the island of the Seine,,
where now stands the statue of Henry IV., the crucifix being
held before de Molay at his own request.

This was not the death of a heretic. I see no sign of heresy
or free thought in these proceedings, though I believe with
Michelet, Martin, Schlosser, Gieseler, Hase, and other his-
torians that the denial, spitting, and kissing really did occas-
ionally take place. The great differences among the witnesses
as to the time, order and manner of the abominations, and
especially as to the form of cross used, seem to me, as do the
ease with which all these commands were evaded and the fact
that usually nothing of the sort was required, to show that
there was no rule of the Order enjoining any such proceedings,
and no symbolic meaning. I venture to suggest that those
witnesses were right who said it was only a joke, and that
young and timid neophytes were occasionally insulted merely
for amusement, as is still done in ships, camps, and colleges.
Obscene and blasphemous rites were then publicly practiced
with impunity at the Feasts of the Ass, of Fools, and of the
Abbot of Unreason. One of the last is described in Scott's
Abbot (chapters xiv. and xv.). If we suppose that these inde-
cent tricks were known only to a portion of the Templars in
France, and not practiced elsewhere, the great variation in the
testimony is easily accounted for, as are the condemnation by
the States General and all other French judges, the acquittal in
Spain and Germany, and the slight penalties inflicted in Great
Britain and Italy.

IV.

That the Templars were only imaginary heretics is shown
clearly by contrasting them with a real one, sent to the stake

212 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1307

a few months before their arrest, for asserting the liberty of
the Spirit more bravely than was ever done before. Carcas-
sonne, Toulouse, and Monsegur had been defended ; Dolcino
opened the attack. His master, Segarelli, an insane enthusi-
ast who tried to imitate the first disciples in their poverty, as
well as in their garb, had founded the sect of Apostolic
Brethren on the basis of an individual inspiration outside of
the Church, which therefore had him burned at Parma in
1300. Already had Dolcino begun to travel through Pied-
mont, where he was born, Lombardy, the possessions of Venice,
and the Tyrol, where he won the love of a nun of high rank
and wealth, the brave and beautiful Margaret of Trent.
Many other earnest men and women listened eagerly to his
declaration that the time was come for founding a new and
spiritual church, whose members were to be joined together
only by pure love, and not be subject to any outward bonds of
obedience. " Sine vinculo obedientiae exterioris sed cum in-
teriori tantum," are his own words, bolder than any that had
yet been spoken in Christendom. Early in the year 1305 he
called his partisans together on the mountains, near Varallo
and Campertogno, in the valley of the Sesia. Thousands of
men and women joined him, and an army of crusaders was
driven back after a fierce fight, in which Margaret took part.
Soon they were assailed by a more deadly foe — hunger. The
capture of Varallo and devastation of the surrounding villages
yielded but a temporary supply, and the attempt to
get provisions as ransom for their captives ended in
the fulfillment of the threat that these prisoners would
be put to death. The following March the Come-outers
made their way over almost impassable rocks to a
mountain, standing about ten miles north-east of Biella, and
then called Zebello or Rubello, though it was afterward
consecrated to St. Bernard, in order to allay the ghosts of
the heretics. Near by lies Trivero, which was at once sur-
prised and pillaged. The bishop of Vercelli made repeated at-
tacks, but could do nothing more than keep up a blockade. Dol-
cino gained victory after victory, captured many villages,
burned churches and crosses, and made numbers of prisoners,

1307] DOLCINO. 213

whom he put to death after vainly trying to exchange them for
provisions. The next winter saw him unconquered, but hope-
lessly imprisoned, much as John Brown was at Harper's Ferry.
All the country around was in arms against him, and he and
his followers were driven to eat rats, dogs, bark, roots, girdles,
shoes, leather coats, etc. It is even said that they practiced
cannibalism ; but it is not said that any of them turned
traitor to their cause. In Holy Week, 1307, the bishop led
up all the men he could muster, and on March 23, the day before
Good Friday, the mountain-camp was finally stormed, more than
a thousand of its defenders slain, and Dolcino and Margaret
taken prisoner. Both refused every entreaty to return to
the Church ; and vainly did men of rank ask the hand of Mar-
garet, who had not lost all her wondrous beauty. On June
1st, she perished in the flames before the eyes of Dolcino,
whose calm voice strengthened her to show no fear. Neither
did he, though he was led that day through the streets of
Vercelli, having one member of his body after another torn
off with red-hot pincers, before he was finally flung where his
ashes mingled with hers.

v.

Nowhere do Dolcino, the Templars, and Boniface still live
as they do in the great poem, whose theological tendency is
still a difficult problem. Dante's banishment, in 1302, for
political reasons by his fellow citizens from Guelfic Florence,
forced him to take shelter with the imperialists ; and it was in
their interest that, about ten years later, he wrote his De
Monarchia, a treatise arguing that political sovereignty comes
immediately from God to the emperor, that popes are entrusted
with merely religious sway, and that even this depends wholly
on their not usurping temporal power, selling offices, or other-
wise plundering their sheep. This book, worthy of Arnold
di Brescia, was burned at Bologna in 1329 by a cardinal who
sought to have its author's dead body treated likewise ; and
Catholics are still forbidden the perusal, an offense which very
few are now likely to commit. The archbishop of Milan

214 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1321

also charged Dante with heresy ; and he was forced to appear
in person before the inquisitors, who found the evidence
too weak, or his protectors too mighty.

The principal witness we can examinees the Divina Corn-
media, finished just before Dante's death in 1321. This
sublime picture of the doom of the wicked and triumph of
the redeemed is now highly prized by all Christians, especially
Roman Catholics, but was formerly regarded with much sus-
picion, a Jesuit, named Arduino, even trying to show that so
disgraceful a poem must have been forged by some obscure
Wycliffite. Here we find the most heterodox ideas of the
De Monarchia presented in the assertions of the divine right
of CaBsar to sit in the saddle and rule Italy, and of the
necessity of two suns, one to show the right path in worldly,
and the other in religious matters (Purgatorio, vi., 76-93, xvi.,
106-8).

The first appearance of the papacy is as the :

" She-wolf that with all hungerings
Seemed to be laden in her meagerness,
And many folk has caused to live forlorn."

We read further that she

" Suffers not any one to pass her way,

But so doth harass him that she destroys him.

And has a nature so malign and ruthless

That never doth she glut her greedy will,

And after food is hungrier than before.

Many the animals with whom she weds,

And more they shall be still, until the Greyhound

Comes, who shall make her perish in her pain."

Of this Ghibelline chief, whose residence is then described,
it is said :

" Through every city shall he hunt her down,
Until he shall have driven her back to Hell,
There from whence envy first did let her loose."
(Inferno, i., 49-111, Longfellow's Version).

lai]

Dante says to the ghost of Pope Boniface :

" Your avarice afflicts the world,

Trampling the good and lifting the depraved.

The Evangelist you Pastors had in mind,

When she who sitteth upon many waters

To fornicate with kings by him was seen ;

The same who with the seven heads was born,

And power and strength from the ten horns received,

So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing.

Ye have made yourselves a god of gold and silver,

And from the idolater how differ ye,

Save that he one, and ye a hundred worship ?

Ah, Constantine, of how much ill was mother,

Not thy conversion, but that marriage-dower

Which the first wealthy Father took from thee."

(Inferno xix., 104-117). *

Similar denunciation of that alleged donation which was
the foundation of the temporal power of the popes is put
into the mouth of the heavenly Eagle, who calls it, " The
good intent that bore bad fruit." (Pctradigo, xx., 56, Long-
fellow).

A little later we find St. Peter, in a glow of indignation
which makes Beatrice and all heaven turn red with sympathy,
say of Boniface :

" He who usurps upon the earth my place,
My place, my place, which vacant has become
Before the presence of the Son of God,
Has of my cemetery made a sewer
Of blood and stench, whereby the Perverse One
Who fell from here, below there is appeased."

Then he denounces the popes for using the banner bearing his
keys in making war against the baptized, a practice necessarily
involved in their temporal sovereignty, which Dante evidently
wished to have pass away.

Not one of Peter's successors appears in Dante's heaven, but
there are two in purgatory for gluttony and avarice, and three

216 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1321

of those under whom he lived are doomed to a peculiarly hot
place set apart for the punishment of simony, a sin almost
confined to popes and prelates. The last words of Beatrice, as
she leaves Dante to take her place in the White Rose of the
Saints, are a burst of exultation at the damnation of Boniface
and Clement. Another contemporary, Celestine V., is left
outside of hell among the wretches, " Hateful to God and to
his enemies." Many more popes are in hell for avarice, and
an archbishop is sunk in the worst of the nine circles, freezing
eternally among other traitors, while his victim is ever gnaw-
ing at his brain. Still more remarkable is Dante's saying
nothing about the pope in his confession of faith to Peter,
omitting the article about the Church still repeated in the
Nicene Creed as well as in that ascribed to the Apostles, and
inserting such tributes to the Bible as are not found in these
much honored formulas. (Paradiso, xxiv., 93 and 136, xxv.,
88.) The triumph of the Church, at the close of the Purga-
torio, brings in all the writers of the New Testament, but has
no place for the pope, who can not be meant, as some Catho-
lics suppose, by the Griffin, since this monster is said to have
never plucked forbidden fruit. (Purgatorio, xxxii., 43.)

We also find the pope and cardinals blamed for
studying the Decretals instead of the Gospel. (Paradiso
ix., 133-7). Christ is said to be daily bought and sold
in their court. (Paradiso, xvii., 51). A heathen emperor, who
had persecuted Christianity, is placed in heaven, and the poet
laureate of pagan imperialism is charged with the duty of
guiding Dante through two-thirds of his holy journey ; but
we do not find any of the professions, then customary, that
the poem is written in obedience to Church authority, or iu
the service of the pope. On the contrary, the Paradiso begins
and ends with the claim of its author to an independent in-
spiration, coming directly from the Light Eternal and Glory
Infinite.

Considering these facts, and also Dante's epitaph, written by
himself and still to be seen on his tomb at Ravenna, "Jura
Monarchic, Superos Phlegetonta Lacusque Lustrando cecini,"
etc. " I sang the rights of Imperialism, traversing heaven,,

1321] DANTE.

purgatory, and hell," I think we must believe he meant to
condemn the papal injustice by contrasting it with the divine
justice which he thought the emperor ordained to dispense.
The grim humor of concealing such an attack on the Head of
the Church under the mask of pious zeal for her purity, would
be in full harmony with the title of the Divine Comedy, which
is, I suspect, further justified by many puns like that in the
opening line of Canto vii. of the Inferno, " Pape Satan,
Pape Satan, Aleppe," which would mean if printed as
" Pap'e Satan," etc., " The Pope is the Devil ! "

That Dante was either an unbeliever or a heretic does
not follow necessarily. All his language toward God,
Christ, Mary, the Saints, the Fathers, and the angels
is thoroughly devout, and I believe sincerely so. The
treatment of Boniface by Philip he condemns, (Purga-
torio, xx., 85-91), and of the general damnation of the heathen
he professes to become fully convinced — (Paradiso, xx., 70—
105) — though he makes exceptions in favor of Trajan, Cato,
and Ripheus. The two great rationalists, Bacon and Abelard,
he does not mention, though they died at peace with the
Church ; and their persecutors, Bernard and Bonaventura, are
placed by him in heaven. There, indeed, we find Sigier of
Paris, who, Dante says, taught invidious truth ; but Michael
Scott is put in hell as a soothsayer. Two more noted unbe-
lievers, Frederic II. and Farinata, are confined in fiery tombs
with other Epicureans, though they had been leaders in his
own party. That none of the early heretics are with them,
except Pope Anastasius, seems to me of little significance in
view of the celestial seat gwen to their cruel enemy, Justinian.
That none of the Catharists, Waldenses, or heretical Mystics,
except Dolcino, are condemned to hell is more surprising.
That Dante had any sympathy with the Albigensians, as has
recently been maintained, is altogether unlikely, since he-
shows no reverence for Satan, admits one of their worst perse-
cutors, Bishop Fulk, of Toulouse, among the blessed saintsr
and puts this monster in a Heaven of Lovers, which, accord-
ing to strict Catharism, could not exist. Fulk had treated the
Waldenses also so badly, that Dante can not be ranked among

•218 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1321

their champions, especially as there is no proof that he knew
much about this sect. He certainly had much of their rever-
ence for the Bible, but so had the Mystics generally.

That Dante had met with heretical Mystics is almost cer-
tain, and some sympathy for them appears, not only in his
placing the Bible above the Church, but in his giving one of
their chief authorities, Joachim of Floris, the alleged author
of the Eternal Gospel, a place in the Heaven of the Sun,
among the blessed theologians. Still more important is a fact
I have not seen noticed. Dante agreed with those heterodox
visionaries among the Franciscans, who called themselves
Spirituales and were nicknamed Fratricelli, in the principal
controversy they were then holding with Pope John XXII.,
and the Dominicans. The Franciscan Mystics maintained that
their founder, in enjoining absolute poverty, not only on his
•disciples as individuals b'ut on his Order as a whole, was merely
trying to have such a life led as that actually lived by Jesus,
And therefore that they themselves alone were faithful imita-
tors of Christ. This latter doctrine was explicitly condemned
in the papal bull of January 13, 1317. In 1321, the year of
Dante's death, one of these Fratricelli confessed, during his
trial by the inquisition at Narbonne, that he believed in the
absolute poverty of Jesus. The Dominicans at once passed a
vote of censure, with only one dissenting voice, that of a
-scholar who was punished with imprisonment by the pope at
Avignon. The General Chapter of the Franciscans, on Whit-
sunday, 1322, held that Jesus had really been as poor as Fran-
ois, but the pope formally condemned, in a bull of November
12, 1323, this proposition, from which was easily deduced the
•corollary that his own life, like that of his prelates, was
Christless. Among the champions of poverty was Ockham,
who was soon obliged to take refuge, as we shall see, among
the pope's open enemies.

It was in the midst of this controversy about how poor
Jesus really was, that Dante finished his Divina Commedia
where he says of the marriage of Francis with Poverty :

" She, reft of her first husband, scorned, obscure,

1321] DANTE. 219

One thousand and one hundred years and more,
Waited without a suitor till he came."

" Naught it availed being constant and undaunted
So that, when Mary still remained below,
She mounted up with Christ upon the cross.
But that too darkly I may not proceed
Francis and Poverty for these two lovers
Take thou henceforward in my speech diffuse."

(Paradiso xi., 64-75).

In thus maintaining that Jesus lived a life which Francis
•was the first to imitate, Dante must have known that he
was taking side with the Fratricelli, many of whom- were in
prison as he finished his poems, and four of whom had been
sent three years before to the stake. In the next Canto to
that just cited (Paradiso xii., 124-5) he speaks of the contest
actually going on between the mystical Franciscans who
wished strictly to enforce the rule of poverty, and their oppo-
nents who sought to relax it, and names the leaders on both
sides, Casale and Acquasparto. Here, however, he does not
seem to agree fully with either party. This, together with
Dante's representing Celestine V., who was in special honor
with the Franciscan Mystics and was canonized while the
poet wrote, 1313, as eternally lost for' resigning the papacy,
though the reference is somewhat questionable, leads me to
believe that Dante did not fully agree with these heretics,
though he had more sympathy with them, apparently, than
with any one else.

In fact he was too independent to follow any one's lead,
whether heresiarch or pope. He thought for himself, as Eri-
gena, Bacon, and Abelard had done, though more devoutly
than the two latter. The whole spirit of his writings is in
harmony with his breaking the pavement of the Baptistery to
rescue a drowning child, and his refusing when he was more
than fifty years old, and had been fourteen years in exile, to
return to his native city, on condition of doing public penance
as an offender. Whatever may have been his precise creed,
liis example is one of the noblest in our history. His choice

220 THE EEVOL T OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1321

of a modern language and a popular theme assisted him in-
doing more than any one before him in Christendom to make
men think freely and boldly. He has pictured not only the
medieval theology but the spirit that swept it away.

VI.

We have seen Mysticism inspire the strife of Dolcino against
bishops, and of Dante against popes. Among other defender*
of evangelical poverty at the beginning of this century was
Jacopone da Todi, author of Stabat Mater and of the satire
saying, " Oh Father Boniface, how much you have deceived
the world. You have cast away all shame and rejoiced in
scandals as a salamander does in fire. You have fallen like a
new Lucifer." This pope had asked the poet, whom he kept
for several years in prison, " When do you expect to get out ? "
" When you get in," replied Jacopone, who lived long enough
to see Boniface a prisoner in the Vatican. Another Francis-
can Mystic, Bernard Delicieux, persuaded Philip by personal
entreaty to check the cruelty of the inquisition, against which
he had preached with great power in one of its chief seats,
Carcassonne. There, in ]303, he assisted the king's commis-
sioner, Jean de Picquigny, to break open its dungeons, and
take its prisoners under the protection of the laws ; and he
honored this official the next year with a funeral mass and eu-
logy, despite his having died under excommunication. Bene-
dict XL had tried to arrest the friar some months before, but
this was not permitted by the people of Carcassonne. The
next year it was discovered that some of the opponents of the
inquisition had thought Philip lukewarm, and tried to get up
a revolution in favor of the king of Majorca. Forty-five of
these plotters were hung, and Bernard sent as prisoner by
Philip to Clement V., who suffered him in 1308 to return to-
Carcassonne. Nine years later, the old man was summoned
again to Avignon, with sixty-three other defenders of the
poverty of Christ, among them Casale, whom we have seen
mentioned by Dante. All were put in prison, and Bernard
Delicieux was tried for assailing the inquisition, plotting

1321] THE MYSTICS.

against King Philip, and poisoning Pope Benedict. The first
offense he avowed at once, the second he confessed under tor-
ture, but no torments could make him say he had any thing to
do with the pope's death. On December 6, 1319, he was sen-
tenced to imprisonment for life on bread and water, and died
«oon after. (Revue des Deux Mondes^ June 15, 1888.) His
four brethren, who were burned by John XXII. at Mar-
seilles meantime, May 7, 1318, and whose bones were pre-
served as relics, led the way for two thousand such martyrs
during that century.

There had been little persecution in Germany since the
assassination of Droso and Conrad, whose fury had been
mainly directed against Catharists, but insubordinate Mys-
ticism was now found in the lay societies existing for prayer
and charity under Franciscan oversight. The Lollards, who
took their name from singing at funerals, the Beguines, medi-
eval Sisters of Charity not yet wholly extinct, and the Beg-
hards, or Brothers of Mercy, soon became almost as obnoxious
as the Spirituales or Fratricelli. All these names are used of
heretics who had nothing to do with the Franciscans, as was
that of Brothers and Sisters of the Free Spirit.

One of their early leaders, Margaret Porretta, was burned
at Paris in 1310, for teaching that the soul which is one with
God is free from laws, and may indulge every inclination
innocently. Seven years later, men and women were tried in
Strasburg for practicing communism, also charged against
Dolcino, and holding that God is every thing ; that man may
become God and thus save himself as Jesus did ; that the
Church and her sacraments are useless; that prayer and fasting
check the progress of the soul ; that the good man needs no
priest ; that whatever the inspired do is holy ; that it is better
to follow the Inner Voice than the written Gospel, which is
full of errors and not so good as books yet to be written;
that we must give up even God in order to become God ; that
there is no angel but Virtue and no devil but Vice ; and that
there is no resurrection of the body, and no hell or purgatory,
so that even Jews and Pagans are to be saved. Such teach-
ings brought Walter, the first Lollard martyr, to the stake at

222 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1323

Cologne in 1322, and executions of martyrs took place occa-
sionally thenceforth in Germany, but not so frequently as in
France and Italy.

These Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit sought not
to be less but more religious and moral than their neighbors,
and set aside all ecclesiastical restraints, only in order to yield
more strict obedience to the Inner Light. Some of them are
said to have carried their scorn of conventionalities so far as
to worship in utter nudity, and the inquisitors, who testify to
this practice, are all the more to be believed because they admit
expressly that it did not lead to vice. Nor does there seem to
have been any thing criminal in the familiar intercourse of
the sexes practiced by Dolcino's followers, and afterward by
the heretical Mystics in Germany, where they were called
Sisterers, Schwestriones. Even the view that whatever God
has permitted man to do, however wicked it may be called, is
right and not to be regretted, seems to have been held with-
out bad results.

German Mysticism owes much to a Dominican, who was in
the Church but not of it. John Eckhart was enabled by his
study of Greek philosophy, the Bible, the Fathers, and the
scholastics to develop about 1300, in Cologne, a system which
he called wholly new, though it was like that of Erigena,.
whom he had not read, and whom he surpassed in boldness of
thought as well as in plainness of speech. So clear and grand
a proclamation of the soul's essential goodness and her innate
capacity for all truth had never before been heard in Christen-
dom. He had stood too high above Church and Bible ta
attack them, but he set at naught all their claims, as he
showed that salvation could come only through the soul's
rising independently into oneness with God, and that this
could be done by each soul as soon as she pleased. " Blessed,'*
he said, " are they who live by faith, following the Bible and
doing what is commanded by the Church ; they are children
of God. Far more blessed are the Godlike, who live in Him,
enjoying such knowledge as no book can give, and doing His
will in such perfect harmony, as to have no need of human,
ordinances." (Lasson, Meister Eckhart, pp. 176-7, 299).

1322] THE MYSTICS.

" Fasting and scourging profit nothing ; love is the essence of
goodness, as selfishness is of sin." " Jesus must have placed
Martha, who actually lived the life of love, above Mary, wha
merely thought about it." " They are most holy who make
least effort to be so, the highest goodness being that which is
most spontaneous." " God loves every soul and keeps no one
from Him : only they who choose it remain in outer darkness."
" All that comes to pass is according to His will ; nothing
that is done should be regretted ; but even sin must have
been a part of His plan ; for if there had been no sin, there
could be no salvation." " The visible world is a copy
of the invisible and ideal, which we know through powers
transcending those of observation or reasoning." " Highest
of all truths is that divine oneness in which we call ourselves
God." Rightly is this forerunner of Emerson represented by
Whittier as hearing the Spirit say :

" Ye bow to ghastly symbols,
To cross, and scourge, and thorn,
Ye seek his Syrian manger
Who in the heart is born.

For the dead Christ, not the living,
Ye watch his empty grave
Whose life alone within you,
Has power to bless and save.

0 blind ones, outward groping
The idle quest forego ;

Who listens to his inward voice
Alone of him shall know.

Have ye not still my witness
Within yourselves alway,
My hand that on the keys of life
For bliss or bale I lay ?

A light, a guide, a warning,

A presence ever near,

Through the deep silence of the flesh

1 reach the inward ear

224 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1327

The stern behest of duty,
The doom-book open thrown,
The heaven ye seek, the hell ye fear,
Are with yourselves alone."

(The Vision of Echard.)

No wonder that Eckhart came under the papal censure in
1327. He professed submission and died soon after ; but his
works continued to be widely read and his ideas have often
reappeared, for instance in the Theologia Germanica and the
Nine Rocks, a description of the stages of ascent into a
union with the Deity ; which even Jews, Turks, and pagans
might attain, according to the author, Rudolph Merswin, also
noted for founding, near Strasburg, a monastery, which he
empowered the comparatively tolerant Hospitallers, or Knights
of the White Cross, to keep open as a refuge for men too
liberal to be sheltered elsewhere.

Most prominent among Eckhart's followers is the famous
preacher, John Tauler of Strasburg, a Dominican who op-
posed the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, and tried to
keep in friendly relations with the Church, though he taught
that her sacraments changed from helps to hindrances, as men
rose in spiritual life. He went on preaching and celebrating
the Lord's supper, during the twenty-five years when this was
forbidden over a great part of Germany, because the emperor
had offended the popes. Even the Black Death, which slew
nearly half the people of Germany, France, England, and Italy
in 1348 and 9, did not move the wicked shepherd to pity his dying
sheep. But Tauler and two of his friends published letters
exhorting all monks and priests to pay no attention to the
pope's interdict, still in force, but give the sick and dying all
the comfort they could. " The pope has no power to shut
heaven against poor sinners who have fallen innocently under
his ban." " When any one confesses his sins and desires the
holy sacrament, we ought to give it to him and comfort him,
paying more heed to the words of Christ and the Apostles
than to the ban which cometh from envy and lust of worldly
power." " It is not proper for a Christian shepherd when one

1347] THE MYSTICS. £25

man deserves excommunication, to lay his ban on innocent peo-
ple who have never seen the sinner, and to condemn whole
countries, cities, and villages, for this is not commanded by-
Christ or by the councils, but is done under an usurped au-
thority." " That all those who will not kiss the pope's foot
are heretics, that he who takes the name and fills the office of
emperor being duly chosen by the electors is an apostate, or
that they who yield him obedience, as to a ruler ordained of
God, sin against the Church and become heretical is not to be
proved from Holy Scripture. Wherefore those who hold the
true Christian faith, and sin only against the pope's person
are no heretics ; but all who have come innocently under an
unjust ban are free before God, their curse will change to a
blessing and their excommunication and oppression will God
lift off."

This caused Tauler, who stands to Eckhart much as Parker
does to Emerson, to be driven out of Strasburg by the pope
and his servile emperor in 1350, but he went on preaching at
Cologne, where he died in 1361. So noble had been his efforts
to give the religious consolation forbidden by the pope, that I
am glad to find the best authorities against the story of his
suspending them for two years, because a mystical layman
told him he was not holy.

One of his contemporaries, but not an acquaintance, made
the most famous attempt to set up the reign of the Holy Ghost.
Rome had been deserted for forty years by her bishops and
fallen into utter anarchy, so that rapes, murders, and robberies
were perpetrated with impunity, not only by the nobles but by
the banditti whom they sheltered ; agriculture was insecure,
and few pilgrims dared visit what professed to be a holy city.
Vainly had the popes been entreated to leave Avignon, which
they had made the most shameless of cities, as is attested by
Petrarch, who was not prevented, either by his loyalty to the
Church or by his own unchastity, from making such terrible
charges of licentiousness and rapacity against Clement VI.
and his cardinals as had in some cases to be veiled in allegory,
and in others were suppressed. Desire to make the streets
and roads safe enough to hold a jubilee with great profit led

226 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1347

this pontiff to sanction the schemes of Rienzi, the son of a
washerwoman, but a ripe scholar, a powerful orator, and an
enthusiast for reviving the ancient glory of the eternal city.

The people had been aroused by his orations and allegorical
paintings, many citizens had promised to fight against the
nobles, and the most dreaded tyrants were absent from the
city, when Rienzi invited all the Romans to meet at the Capi-
tol without arms, early on May 20, 1347, the Pentecostal fes-
tival of the descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles. At
nine that morning the deliverer, who had spent the night in
hearing masses to the Spirit, appeared in armor, followed by
one hundred confederates and preceded by the banners of
justice and peace, and the red flag of liberty. Universal ap-
plause welcomed his proposal of putting down robbery and
murder by a popular government, supported by a militia,
which was to assemble at the sound of the great bell.
He was made tribune, and the nobles had to swear submission,
or leave the city. No armorial bearings were tolerated but
those of the pope, nor could any one else be spoken of as
Lord. Robbers were punished ; peasants and pilgrims were
protected ; order was established in and around Rome ; eight-
een hundred of its citizens who had been at deadly enmity were
reconciled ; and so were many husbands and wives who had left
each other. A tyrant who offered resistance at Viterbo was
promptly overcome. The messengers of the Republic
found themselves every where welcomed, and even worship-
ed, as they traversed Italy with their silvered wands, issuing
invitations to a great parliament to meet at Rome on August
1, and establish the unity of the nation. This idea of a
united Italy, which Rienzi was the first to proclaim and which
has only recently been realized, gave great offense at Avignon,
where it was seen to be incompatible with the temporal pow-
er. Florence, too, insisted on her own independence. Rienzi,
who was sadly in lack of prudent advisers, and far too fond
of theatrical display, turned the meeting in August, when del-
egates from twenty-five cities were present, into the celebra-
tion of his own consecration as knight of the Holy Ghost.
He began the solemnities by bathing in the porphyry vase

1347] THE MYSTICS. 227

said to have been used by Constantine, and finished by issu-
ing a proclamation still extant, and substantially as follows :
" According to the authority given us by the Roman people
and the pope, we now declare this city free, as are all the
others in Italy, and to these latter we now grant Roman citi-
zenship. By this same authority, and the grace of the Holy
Spirit, we claim that the right to elect emperors belongs to
the citizens of Rome, and we summon Louis, duke of Bavar-
ia, and Charles, king of Bohemia, who pretend to have been
chosen emperors, together with the archbishops and other
princes in Germany, who call themselves electors, to appear in
person before us and the other representatives of the pope
and of the Roman people."

The papal legate here sought to protest, but Rienzi bade
the trumpets sound so as to drown his voice. The claim thus
made of inspiration independent of the Church, was repeated
on the 15th, when the tribune had himself crowned, not only
with wreaths of oak leaves, ivy, myrtle, laurel, and olive, but
with a silver diadem, tyyifying the gifts of the Holy Ghost.
These heretical pretensions, together with the assertion of the
independence of Rome, greatly alarmed Clement, who also
objected to the use of the vase and the execution of several
monks and nobles for their crimes, and who seems to have
been especially offended at Rienzi's refusal to favor Queen
Joanna of Naples, who had appealed to him as did her adver-
sary, the king of Hungary, by whom she was charged with
adultery, and complicity in the murder of her husband. Of
these crimes she has been found guilty by most historians ;
but she was promptly acquitted by the pope and his cardi-
nals, owing to the fascinations of her youth, grace, and
beauty, which led the gallant pontiff to give her not only his
constant society, but the Golden Rose, annually presented to
monarchs dear to the Church, while the pretty sinner re-
warded her lover with the sovereignty of Avignon. That
city's magistrates wounded one of the tribune's envoys,
broke his wand, and tore up his letters ; a new and more vig-
orous legate was sent to Rome early in October, empowered to
depose the liberator as a heretic, and seventy of the rob-

228 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1347

ber barons were asked to help overthrow the ruler who had
checked their crimes.

Meantime Rienzi greatly offended the leading nobles by ar-
resting them at a banquet in his palace as traitors, keeping
them all night under sentence of death, and then making them
in the presence of their people renew their oaths of fidelity,
which in the state of mind shown at Avignon were worthless,
so that their release was almost as great a blunder as their
capture. Rienzi failed to subdue their revolt soon afterward,
but on November 20, their attack on Rome was repulsed
with the loss of eighty of their chiefs. Already had the
legate made an unfriendly visit to Rome, and Rienzi's efforts
to propitiate him and his master were useless. On December
3, appeared the papal bull, denouncing Rienzi as a criminal
and a heretic, and exhorting the Romans to shake off his yoke.
Still more alarming was the pope's delay to proclaim the
jubilee which would crowd the city with wealthy visitors.
Vainly did the great bell ring on the 15th, though only 150
soldiers had revolted. The small force Rienzi was able to
send against them was repulsed, and he did not dare attack
them himself, but resigned his power, leaving Rome to relapse
into anarchy, despite the efforts of other patriots, who had no
support from the pope.

Several years were spent by Rienzi in company with other
Mystics who lived as hermits on Monte Majella, in the wildest
part of the Apennines. At their command he went to Prague
in July, 1350, and announced to the emperor Charles, whom
three years before he had threatened to depose, that the
reign of the Holy Ghost was near at hand. Clement was to
be put to death by the people of Avignon, and the new pope
would be a holy man who, in company with Charles and
Rienzi, would rule over all the earth. The emperor answered
the invitation to invade Italy by throwing the prophet into pris-
on at Prague, whence he was sent to Avignon in July, 1352.
Clement died while he was on trial, and Innocent VI. liad as
little scruple about releasing a heretic in order to gain power
at Rome, as he had about annulling on his accession the con-
stitution which he had just before sworn to observe, and

1347J THE MYSTICS. 229

which would have placed the Church under au aristocracy of
cardinals.

On August 1, 1354, Rienzi returned as the pope's servant
to the city where, just seven years before, he had sought to
become knight of the Holy Ghost. He still did his
best to put down the patrons of robbers, but to
one of them, a soldier of fortune, the Era Moreale,
he had been so much indebted for aid to return, that
his execution looked like ingratitude. Still more offense was
given by the death of a highly respected citizen named Pan-
dolfo, as a traitor. Rienzi's fondness for wine increased his
unpopularity, and his attempt to augment the taxes on wine
and salt led to a general insurrection, in which he was mur-
dered while trying to escape in disguise, on October 8, 1354.
His body was hung up for insult during several days, and
then burned by some Jews to ashes, which were scattered.
So ended the attempt to restore Rome to her ancient liberty
and grandeur by making her the capital of the reign of the
Holy Ghost.

Rienzi, Tauler, Eckhart, Margaret Porretta, Bernard
Delicieux, Jacopone da Todi, Dante, and Dolcino show us
the boldness of Mysticism. So indeed does the more ortho-
dox Raymond Lully, who thought his method of teaching,
which for a time proved extremely serviceable, had been
specially revealed to him by Jesus, and who was stoned to
death in 1315 by Moors whom he was trying to convert.
Waldensianism had now become thoroughly penetrated by
Mysticism, and it is by no means certain which name belongs
to the 114 martyrs at Paris in 1304. Nor can we tell which
influence preponderated in the Masonic lodges, or Bauhutten,
which had formed since the twelfth century a great secret
organization of workingmen, with its center at Strasburg, and
which came under the papal censure in 1326. Catharism had
been so thoroughly suppressed that there were no heretics of
any importance, except Mystics, in the fourteenth century,
until near its close.

230 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1347

'

VII.

The opposition, already noticed, of Germany to the pope
was largely due to his insisting on being allowed to confirm
or annul the election of her emperor. After the death of
Clement V. the cardinals had refused for more than two
years to fill the vacancy, and it was only under compulsion
from the French government that John XXII., the son of a
cobbler, and persecutor of the Fratricelli, was chosen on
August 7, 1316. Meantime, Louis of Bavaria and Frederic
of Austria had been simultaneously chosen King of the
Romans, the title held by emperors previous to coronation by
the pope. These rivals preferred the arbitration of war to
that of the Church, and the battle of Morgarten, where the
Swiss asserted an independence which William Tell seems to
have cfcme very little to achieve, was incidental to the strife
which ended in the complete victory won by Louis at
Muhldorf, September 28, 1322. A few days afterward, John
XXII., who had from the time of his own election claimed
political authority over the empire, on the pretext that there
was an interregnum, issued a process, or as Louis called it, an
excess, declaring this emperor's election null and void, be-
cause not confirmed at Avignon, and bidding him cease to
rule, under penalty of excommunication. On January 22,
1324, he made a formal protest at Sachsenhausen, saying that
he needed no confirmation from the pope, that the latter had
no authority during vacancies, that " John XXII., who calls
himself pope," was so great a heretic and enemy of all
peace as to have forfeited the tiara, and that a general
council must decide between them.

Now appeared the Defensor Pads of Marsilius of Padua,
a jurist who maintained that the New Testament is the
highest authority ; that this forbids the papacy ; that all
bishops are equal in rank, unless one be temporarily elevated
above his brethren by the emperor, the true defender of
peace ; that the power to give absolution belongs to God
alone ; that the pope is no successor of Peter, who probably
never entered Italy; that only a general council can lay

1347] LO U1S OF BA VARIA. 231

down articles of faith ; that the Church consists of all
Christians, not of the clergy only ; and that it is for the
state to fill benefices and judge heretics. The daring author
was promptly excommunicated, but was made court-physician
by Louis, who had himself come under the ban on March
23, 1334, as did his subjects on July 11. Five German
bishops still adhered to him, the Franciscans and Knights of
the Black Cross were generally on his side, and so were
most of the large cities, now rapidly becoming democracies.
Strasburg and Augsburg forced the clergy to keep up public
worship for twenty-five years in spite of the interdict, as is
still commemorated in a song of the period:

" Do soltent sie ouch f urbas singen
Oder aber us der Statt springen."

(" They shall none the less their masses sing,
Or out of the city we'll make them spring.")

Louis was soon able to gain a recognition of his claims
from his rival, who was accordingly set at liberty. This
treaty John forbade Frederic to observe, but the German's
conscience was holier than his pope, and, finding his
brother unwilling to make peace, he returned to captivity.
Various compromises were proposed, but were defeated by
the pope's dislike of any German emperor. One-half of
Christendom was under the ban when Louis was invited by
the Italian princes to Milan, where he received the iron
crown from three bishops on May 31, 1327. Vainly did the
pontiff now try to strip him of every thing but his name.
Rome, whose people had recently made Sciarra Colonna, the
assailant of Boniface, their captain, gladly opened her gates
on January 7, 1328. The coronation was decreed by the citi-
zens assembled in the capitol the next Monday, the llth, and
performed on Sunday, the 17th, by bishops from Venice
and Corsica, assisted by Sciarra and Castruccio of Pisa.

Thus did Louis put in practice the theories of Marsilius,
who accompanied him to Rome and shared the guilt of burning
two of John's partisans alive. On April 14 the emperor an-

232 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1347

nounced to the people, in the place before St. Peter's, that
John XXII. was the Anti-christ and the apocalyptic Rider on
the Red Horse, who takes away peace from the earth, and that
he was deposed for heresy and treason. Sciarra's nephew made
a public protest, but on May 12 the citizens assembled before
St. Peter's once more and accepted a new pope, who called
himself Nicholas V. Even the soldiers of Louis now thought
he was going too far, and on August 4 he had to leave Rome,
while the populace, to whom he had sought to give the spirit-
ual rule of Christendom, flung stones and shouted, " Pereat ! "
His marshal actually killed himself in trying to force the citi-
zens of Pisa to see John XXII. excommunicated and burned
in effigy, on February 19, 1329, by the rival pope, who was
soon sent as a prisoner to Avignon. Louis himself was so
frightened at his own acts, that he offered, soon after re-
turning to Germany, to abdicate in favor of his cousin, but
the king of Naples prevented the pope from accepting the
offer.

John's strength had been largely due to his apparent ortho-
doxy, which had shown itself in persecuting not only Mysti-
cism, but sorcery, for which he burned a bishop soon after his
accession, and to which many enemies of the Church seem
actually to have resorted during this century. In 1331 he-
questioned the ability of the souls in heaven to see God before
the resurrection of the body, and found himself generally
condemned for heresy. He retracted just before his death^
December 4, 1334, but his reputation suffered still more by
his being then found to have amassed about $50,000,000 by
selling not only places in the Church, but licenses to sin, as
may still be seen by his chancery registers, fixing the sums
for which absolution could be bought by priests, nuns, or lay-
men, intending to commit adultery, perjury, murder, etc. His
successor, Benedict XIL, wished to reform the Church, make
peace with Germany, and reside at Rome, but he was so com-
pletely in the power of the king of France that he was able
to leave behind him only the custom of wearing three crowns
in the tiara, and the proverb, " to drink like a pope."

Meantime the electoral princes declared, at Remse, near

1347] OTHER OPPONENTS OF THE PAPACY. 233

Coblentz, on July 16, 1338, that their choice needed no con-
firmation by the pope, and similar action was taken by the
Diet at Frankfort, August 6, and Coblentz, September 12.
At the latter session, Edward III. of England, then the
emperor's ally, was present. These national assemblies
also pronounced the papal interdict null and void, which
caused public worship to be resumed in many places where
it had been gradually discontinued. Louis might have con-
quered if he had not taken it on himself to have his son
married, on February 10, 1342, to the heiress of Tyrol, Mar-
garet of the Pocket-mouth, who had a husband living, and
was too nearly related to the prince. Marsilius and Ockham
wrote in favor of this assumption of privileges claimed by
the pope ; but the German electors took steps toward choos-
ing another emperor. Their purpose strengthened, as Louis
offered to make degrading concessions to the new pope,
Clement VI., who preferred to have a candidate of his own
elected, as was actually done on June 11, 1346. Many princes
and cities still were loyal to Louis, but his death, on October
11, 1347, under a ban which was not removed for two
centuries, left the throne to Charles IV., who, however, was
soon obliged to yield to the spirit of opposition to the power
that had made him emperor, so far as to issue, in 1356, his
Golden Bull, by which the claim that emperors needed con-
firmation by popes, was set aside forever. Thus the struggle
for supremacy, which had lasted for nearly three hundred
years, closed without either party's gaining a decisive victory.
The papal prestige suffered much. Germany had found out
that popes were neither omnipotent nor infallible, but nearly
two centuries more elapsed before she became enlightened
enough to have a Church of her own.

VIII.

Among the allies of Louis has been mentioned William of
Ockham, an English monk who taught at Oxford and Paris,
and who said to the emperor, when he fled to him in 1328
from Avignon, where he had been imprisoned for maintain-

234 777^ REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1347

ing the poverty of Jesus, " Defend me with your sword, and
I will defend you with my pen." To fulfill this promise he
wrote his powerful Compend of the Error of Pope John
XXII. in ninety days, and kept on arguing for the supremacy
of emperors over popes until his death in the same year as
his master, 1347. His whole system of thought was anti-
papal, for he denied the reality of abstractions more boldly
than had yet been done, contending that even the existence
of God could not be proved by reason, or admitted on any
other basis than faitb. Whether there is one or three per-
sons in the Godhead, he calls as insoluble a question as
whether the number of the stars is even or odd. That
there is one First Cause seemed to him no more self-evident
than that there is an endless chain of causes. The so-called
universals, or general terms, have no reality, he said, either
in the mind or out of it ; for we know only particulars, and
these merely so far as they affect us personally, and thus all
inferences, even those leading to belief in God, become too
uncertain for philosophy. Church authority forced him to
admit that theology has found certainties where philosophy
could not, so that there is a double standard of truth. But he
speaks not only of the pope, but of that yet higher authority,
the general council, with such freedom as had not yet been
heard in Christendom ; so that it is pleasant to find that no
scandal can be produced against his life.

" Christianity," he says, " is a law of liberty, and, there-
fore, forbids us to recognize the absolute authority of the
pope, which would make us slaves." " Innovations must be
made when their utility is evident ; and nothing great has
•ever been done by men who were afraid of novelty." " We
must adhere to the mind rather than the words of Christ."
" The Bible is only a part of the opinion of the Church, and
so of less authority than the whole. But even general
councils are not infallible. Neither the supreme pontiff nor
the whole Church of God can make any thing true which is
not true or false which is not false."

Ockham's alliance with the Mystics seems to have been little
more than a league for mutual defense, like that afterwards

1348] OTHER OPPONENTS OF THE PAPACY. 235

formed with the emperor. Yet plainer opposition of all super-
natural authority, whether of Bible, Church, or individual
inspiration animated Peter of Abano, who was protected first
by his king and then by his maid-servant against the inquisi-
tion ; Cecco d' Ascoli, who was burned at Florence in 1327, for
saying that the birth, life, and death of Jesus took place under
the laws written in the stars; and Nicholas of Autricuria, who
was condemned at Paris in 1348, for questioning the possi-
bility of knowing God, and asserting that men would learn
more if they studied nature instead of Aristotle. The great
Peripatetic's authority was, however, claimed by the Aver-
roists, now numerous in Northern Italy, especially Venice,where
their unbelief in immortality, as well as in the Bible, greatly
offended the pious Petrarch, who was himself unconsciously
promoting free thought by assisting in the revival of classic
study, a movement of which the chief seat during the four-
teenth century was Florence. Among other pioneers in the
Renaissance was Boccaccio, best known for exposing the vices
of the clergy in his Decameron. Much is due to the rational-
istic Jews in Southern France ; for instance, Vidal of Nar-
bonne, Caspi, who tried to explain the raising of the dead by
Elijah and Elisha, and the standing still of the sun at the word
of Joshua, as natural phenomena misunderstood, and also Leo,
or Levi, Gersonides, who dwelt in Avignon under the protec-
tion of Clement VI. and who said : " If my reasonings are
correct, the blame men give me is really praise." " We must
bring truth to light, even if it contradict our law, for that is
given only to lead us to truth."

The most formidable opposition thus far made to the Church
did not come from students, but from rulers, who cared little
for heresy or any other form of religion. Such were those
tyrants of Lombardy, the Yisconti, one of whom, John,
archbishop of Milan, on being threatened with deposition,
held up before the pope's messenger in the cathedral his
crosier in one hand and his sword in the other, saying :
" Behold the signs of my spiritual power and of my temporal
•also. With the one I shall defend the other."

Another opponent of papal ambition, who has had little

236 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [l:jr,7

notice from modern historians, is Marzia, wife of Francisco
Ordelaffi, who made himself lord of Forli in 1333, by creeping
into the city hidden in a load of hay, and who extended hi*
sway over Cesena, Imola, and other places near Ravenna. His
subjects loved him for his liberality, especially to orphans, and
enabled him to resist the pope's ban for nearly thirty years.
When he heard the bell announce a papal anathema, he ordered
all the other bells in Forli rung to tell the people that he had
excommunicated the pope and cardinals, whom he forthwith
burned in effigy. As he feasted his friends, he used to say :
" Have this wine and meat lost their flavor on account of the
pope's curse ? " He forced the priests to violate the interdict laid
on his territory, putting to death those who refused to hold
public worship ; and those of the crusaders sent against him
whom he took prisoners, he branded with the sign of the cross
on the soles of their feet, saying, as he applied the hot iron :
" You have taken crosses of cloth, which will wear out. I
want to have you carry crosses that will last." The accounts
of his cruelties, must, however, be received with caution,
since the monkish chroniclers were trained to disregard truth
in the interest of the Church, and some of the worst accusa-
tions against him are disproved by the Annals of Forli and
Cesena. ( Vita de Rienzo, note to Chap, viii.)

When the warlike cardinal, Albornoz, who had recently
brought Rienzi back to Italy, led a crusade against Ordelaffi,
he wrote to his wife, " Cia, take good care of Cesena," where-
she was staying with her children and a few hundred mercen-
aries. "My lord, please to take good care of Forli, as I shall
take good care of Cesena," replied Marzia, and she watched
the walls in armor during the siege, which began early in
April, 1357. Francesco now bade her put to death four citi-
zens most friendly to the pope, but two of her leading adher-
ents persuaded her into a delay, during which this order
became known. On Saturday, which old writers call the
Sabbath, April 29, the citizens rose with cries of " Church and
People ! " " Viva il Popolo ! Viva la Chiesa ! " threw up
barricades, and seized a gate where they were soon joined by
the cardinal's archers. Marzia attacked the rebels promptly,.

1357] OTHER OPPONENTS OF THE PAPACY. 237

but was driven back into the upper city, or Murata, where she
beheaded the two counselors, much to her husband's displeas-
ure. Now she was alone in command, but Albornoz did not
dare attempt to storm, though he had a hundred times her
force. Ere long his miners drained her cistern, and threw
down her largest tower. She filled the turret next in danger
with captured citizens, whose wives and daughters forced the
cardinal to wait long enough to make a breach. Then, on May
27, Madam Cia retreated with her children and soldiers into
the citadel, whose ruins may still be seen high up on Mount
Garampe. Thither came her father to bid her surrender, but
she answered : " When you gave me to my lord, you told me
to obey him above all. I have done so, and intend to do it
until my death. He has given this place into my charge, and
told me not to abandon it on any account. I shall not do so
until he bids me, either in person or by some secret sign.
Little care I for death or any thing else, if I can only obey his
commands." Her soldiers were less brave, and on June 21,
she had to surrender to the cardinal. She asked no mercy,
and was kept more than, two years in prison, until her husband
was compelled to submit on July 4, 1359. Her heroism is
commemorated in a drama, called the Sack of Cesena, and
supposed to have been written by Petrarch.

During her imprisonment took place that revolt of the
Jacquerie or French peasants which was chronicled by Frois-
sart, and which, with those in Rome and Switzerland, shows
the people were struggling after political independence, the
surest guarantee of liberty of thought.

The same spirit will soon be seen in England, where already
was manifest such indignation at the papal exactions, as we
shall find in the next chapter produce an opposition never to
be suppressed. In 1340, Richard Rolle, the hermit of Ham-
pole, and translator of the Psalms,wrote his Prick of Conscience,
the first book against Rome in English, now coming into use
as a literary language, and in 1356, appeared the Last Age of
the Church, a mystical prophecy erroneously attributed to
Wycliffe, and designed to show that simony had become as
dangerous as heresy had been formerly and persecution still

238 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1357

earlier, and that no worse enemy could come except Anti-
christ. In 1343, soon after beginning the hundred years' war
with France, Edward III. refused to let the pope act officially
in making peace. That same year Parliament passed an ordi-
nance which developed in 1351 into the Statute against
Provisors, wherein the nomination at Avignon of foreigners
to English benefices was checked, all appointments infringing
on the rights of the king or other patrons declared null and
void, offenders threatened with fine and imprisonment, and no
appeal to the pope permitted. Similar penalties, and even
outlawry, were denounced in 1353 by the Statute ofPrcemu/tire
against all who should carry into foreign courts suits cogniza-
ble by the law of England. Another abuse, the interference
of the mendicant friars with the parish clergy, as well as with
the Oxford professors, called forth such earnest censure from
Fitzralph, archbishop of Armagh, that he was summoned to
Avignon, where he plead his cause before the pope and car-
dinals in 1357, and died under surveillance three years later,
when the work was taken up by Wycliife, as we shall see in
the next chapter. So violent had the popular feeling against
papacy become before 1350, that Clement VI. had to bid his-
legates be sure to take a strong enough guard to keep them,
from being stoned.

IX.

In the two previous chapters, we saw the church conquer
all heretics and rebels, even on the imperial throne ; but we
have now seen her suffer a series of famous defeats, while her
few and comparatively unimportant victories were due to the
imprudence of such assailants as Dolcino, Louis of Bavaria,
and Rienzi. Among the earliest events in the fourteenth cen-
tury were King Philip's checking the cruelty of the inquisi-
tion, protecting Peter of Abano, imprisoning a legate, burning
a papal bull in public, and even seizing on the person of Pope
Boniface, who escaped only to die in the custody of his own
cardinals in the Vatican. Soon after we find these daring
deeds pronounced praiseworthy by the Head of the Church,

1357] SUMMARY. 239-

tben a French official, as pope after pope continued to be for
more than a century. The condemnation of the prisoner in
the Vatican as a heretic and malefactor was averted with great
difficulty, while the fate of the Templars showed that neither
pope nor council was strong enough to protect thousands of
the most pious and virtuous members of the Church from
open robbery and judicial murder. Nor could the great heresy
of this century, Mysticism, be suppressed as Catharism had
been ; though this was partly owing to the strong likeness of
heretical to orthodox Mystics. It is not altogether certain in
which class we should place Dante, but there is no doubt of
his independence, or of his hostility to the papacy, qualities
which would have caused his writings to be suppressed in the
previous century. Another mystic, Tauler, owes much of his
fame to the revolt of the people of Strasburg against the in-
terdict which he openly violated for twenty-five years and at
last publicly and formally denounced.

During the second quarter of this century, the German and
Italian cities generally took sides with their excommunicated
emperor, crowned him at both Milan and Rome, despite papal
prohibitions, and would have given him the final victory if
it had not been for his rashness in proclaiming an anti-pope,
burning John XXII. in effigy, and violating the time-honored
marriage laws of the Church, as well as for the yet greater im-
prudence of his occasional offers to submit. It cost the popes
nearly thirty years of struggle to get an emperor after their
own heart, and even he had soon to decide the main point of
the controversy against them, and declare in his Golden Bull
that the choice of the Electors does not need to be confirmed
by the Head of the Church. Meantime, Rienzi liberated Rome,
temporarily, and might have done so permanently if it had
not been for his lack of competent advisers, his proneness to
Mysticism and theatrical display, his intoxication at his own
sudden success, and the fear of the citizens that they might
lose the harvest of the jubilee. Greater prudence and courage
enabled the lord of Forli and the heroic lady of Cesenato defy
for many years the anathemas, and for some time even the
armed mercenaries, of the pope. The warlike deeds of Marzia

240 THE REVOLT OF FRANCE AND GERMANY. [1357

and Margaret show how weak was the hold of the Church on
the women of the fourteenth century. Still more influential
on the future were the daring treatises against papal suprem-
acy by Marsilius and Ockham, the latter of whom went fur-
ther than had been done for more than ten centuries in assert-
ing the rights of reason, and claiming liberty of thought. And
while these books circulated with little opposition, we find the
Parliament of England passing anti-papal statutes, and her
people threatening to stone the pope's embassadors. The
Church was plainly losing ground, and finding it so hard to
defend herself as to be much less dangerous to liberty than
before. Only the fact, that the doctrine of the independent
inspiration of all pious souls is the worst possible basis for or-
ganization, prevented Mysticism from successfully asserting
her own claim to be the teacher of the nations.

Most of the events mentioned in this chapter, and also in
the two previous ones, for nearly a thousand years, took place
in a triangle which may be formed by drawing lines from
Rome through Cologne into Friesland, thence through Paris
to Tudela in Spain, and back due east through the center of
Corsica. Central and Southern France, Northern Italy, Swit-
zerland, and Western Germany had formed the cradle of free
thought. Here or in Rome has been the chief scene of our
history since the death of Julian, and one of the most marked
features of our subsequent narrative will be the new promi-
nence of England, Bohemia, and Saxony.

CHAPTER VIII.

OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS.

These ninety years may be rapidly traversed, since they
contain no rationalist of importance, and no contest of any
magnitude except between the champions of rival authorities.
The Church had always looked on the Bible as the highest
source of truth, and the Waldensians had been appealing to it
for two hundred years in opposition to the papacy. This ap-
peal was now to be renewed in England and Bohemia and
much more powerfully than before. Liberty of thought was
not so directly aimed at in this movement as in either Cathar-
ism or the recent Mysticism, but the former had proved too
subject to persecution, while the latter had reached its zenith
of splendor, and was showing itself unfit either for popular
adoption or for permanent organization. The Bible was now
found to furnish a broad and firm platform suited for building
up a new and purer church. And it also proved to be much
more favorable than was expected by its early champions to
liberty of thought. The full adoption of its authority means
the dethronement of popes and bishops, the downfall of that
household tyrant, the confessional, the abolition of the en-
dowments of the clergy, the liberty of preaching without a
license, and the right of the people to read the Scriptures
freely in their own tongue. All these five points were in-
sisted on from the first, and greatly in the interest of mental
liberty, which thus found her best friends among men who
had not the least idea of helping her. Authority still seemed
almighty, but she was beginning to strike herself fatal blows.

ii.

The Waldenses had had so little success that the title of
founder of Protestantism really belongs to Wycliffe, who
seems to have learned nothing from these obscure predeces-

242 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1360

sors, and who certainly brought such literary genius and practi-
cal skill to the evangelical cause, as made it become for the
first time a power in Europe, and one destined to grow for
several centuries. He was, of course, much aided by the
agitation in England, Germany, and Italy, described in the
last chapter, and especially by the writings of his country-
man, Ockham. Very helpful, too, was the publication in 1363
or 3 of a popular poem on the corruptions of the Church, the
Vision of Piers the Plowman, whose author, William Lang-
land, is, as Hallam says, " the first English writer who can be
read with approbation." Its hero is an honest and pious far-
mer, who believes in practical morality and manual labor, and
honors the Bible more than any thing except reason and con-
science, arid denounces the corruption of the Church, without
sparing even the pope, whose bulls are said to be sealed by
Lady Bribery, and to profit nothing without amendment. A
second and more outspoken version, published in 1377, exhorts
the Holy Father in the name of reason to have pity on the
Church and govern himself before he tries to give grace to
others ; charges him with robbing the Church, making himself
king by force, and spilling Christian blood ; brings in an angel
who cries aloud, that from the temporal power the Church has
drunk poison, and makes the momentous prophecy, one hund-
red and fifty years before its fulfillment by Henry VIII.,
" A king shall come, who shall confess you monks and nuns,
treat you as the Bible telleth for breaking your rule, and put
you to penance." A later version, written in 1393, de-
nounces image worship, and all three editions are remarkable
for their reverence for the Scriptures, as well as for showing
much more respect for reason than did Wycliffe.

This famous Oxonian, who owes his name to his Yorkshire
birth-place, took, in 1360, the great step of publishing as part
of his Commentary on the Gospels, a full translation, after-
ward embodied in his Bible. Thus Wycliffe and Langland
labored together in showing the English laity an authority
above the Church. Six years later Parliament rejected the
demand of Urban V. for the arrears during thirty-three
years of the tribute of one thousand marks annually

1376] WTCLIFFE AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 243

from Great Britain and Ireland, originally promised by
King John, but seldom paid with regularity ; and
the reasons for this refusal were publicly set forth by
Wycliffe, who seems to have been present, and who tells how
various speakers maintained that the tribute should never
have been granted without consent of the legislature, that to
accept money as a condition of forgiveness was simony, that
the pope's temporal power was contrary to the example of
Jesus, that he did no good to England, but robbed her
grievously, and' that he was the vassal rather than the sover-
eign of her king, who had no superior but Christ. Wycliffe
professed to be only a reporter, but the place of warden of
Canterbury Hall, Oxford, is said to have been taken from him
soon after by his archbishop and the pope. He does not ap-
pear to have been in the Parliament of 1371, which voted
that the clergy be taxed and the prelates excluded from office,
but five years later we find the rector of Lutterworth, as he
had in the meantime become, taking part in the Good Par-
liament, so-called partly because it foiled the scheme of John
of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, to become heir to the crown,
partly because it checked official corruption, and partly because
it denounced the pope for selling bishoprics, often to several
candidates at once, letting vicious and illiterate foreigners,
who never came to England, hold high places in the Church,
and for taking two hundred thousand pounds a year from the
realm, nearly five times as much as the king. To check these
abuses the papal collectors were threatened with "pain of
life and limb."

This same year, 1376, saw the bishop of London retract
by proxy, at St. Paul's Cross, his publication, without leave
from Parliament, of a papal bull for a crusade against Flor-
ence* who, on being attacked by the pope's troops, while her
own were in his service, had declared war against him, sent
forth a new army with a red banner, on which was written
"Liberty," and called on all his subjects to revolt, as eighty
towns and cities had done in eighty days. During this con-
test, which lasted until 1378, the Florentine ambassador, Bar-
badori, closed a stormy interview with Gregory XL by kneel-

244 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1378

ing before a crucifix, and publicly appealing to Jesus Christ
against his vicar's blasphemy.

This pope, further memorable for exhorting Henry, bishop
of Liege, to repent of his sins, which included the mainte-
nance of a Benedictine abbess as a mistress and the paternity
of fourteen children in twenty-two months, and for finally
persuading him to abdicate, as well as for letting his soldiers
sack Faenza and Cesena, in which latter city five thousand
citizens were murdered and many women violated, issued, on
May 22, 1377, five bulls for the trial of Wycliffe, who had
already appeared on a summons from the Convocation of
English clergy before the primate in St. Paul's Cathedral, on
Thursday, February 19, when the demand of his friends, the
duke of Lancaster and the earl marshal, that he should
have a seat, brought on a quarrel which broke up the session
and caused a dangerous riot. The nineteen articles condemned
by Gregory assert, that the State has power to impeach the
pope, and to deprive the Church of her endowments ; that the
Gospel is a sufficient guide, and that papal censures are valid
only when they conform to the Bible. These charges could
not at first be pressed, owing to the death of Edward and
then to the hostility of Richard's first Parliament, which asked
"Wycliffe if it were not lawful to prohibit sending money to
the pope — a question promptly answered in the affirmative.
Early in 1378 the trial came off in the archbishop's palace,
in Lambeth, where, at the request of the queen-mother,
Wycliffe, whose behavior seems to have been rather too sub-
missive, was simply commanded to keep silence, a result largely
due to the strong sympathy not only of the nobility, but of
the citizens of London.

That April, the people of Rome used such violence in order
to get a pope chosen who should reside at his post, that five
or six months later the cardinals were provoked by the new
pontiff's fury against their luxury, into repudiating the elec-
tion as compulsory, and giving the tiara to a rival who should
dwell at Avignon, an office which fell to the general who had
just sacked Cesena. The unity of the Church was not fully
restored for more than fifty years, during which time the

1380] WTCLIFFE AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 245

rival heads were seen attacking each other with anathemas
and armed mercenaries, murdering cardinals, openly breaking
their promises to resign, defending themselves, often in vain,
against the officers of Christian governments and general coun-
cils, and plundering all Christendom in order to keep up their
armies and courts.

This was Wycliffe's opportunity. Hitherto he had admit-
ted the utility of the papacy, but now he denied its right to
exist, and called it Anti-christ. This was in conformity
with his theory of Dominion, according to which all author-
ity depends on obedience to God. Henceforth we find him
denouncing, in the name of the Bible, not only the tyranny of
the popes, but the wealth of the clergy and their pretended
celibacy. He tried to abolish the confessional, because it is
contrary to Scripture, and enables a man to buy sin like
an ox or a cow, and he would have no such nests of the fiend
as the abbeys. The mendicant friars might, he hoped, yet
do good service as reformers, and it was after their original
pattern that, in 1379 or 80, he began to send out his Poor
Priests, itinerants in coarse russet gowns, who lived on charity
and preached morality and religion, independently of Church
authority. About this time he began the translation of the
whole Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English, a work
whose semi-millenial anniversary was celebrated on December
2, 1880. Single Epistles and Gospels were put in circulation,
with the Ten Commandments, etc., in 1381, but Wycliffe's
Bible was not much known before 1390, when it had been re-
vised after his death by his friend Purvey. During the one
hundred and thirty-five years before the printing of a better
version, this manuscript volume had a great circulation, de-
spite its price, which can not be estimated at less than $100
in modern currency, and was much higher for finely written
copies.

The first check to Wycliffe's influence came from the vio-
lence of professed partisans. The loss of nearly half the
population in the Black Death of 1349, had caused a rise of
wages which Parliament tried vainly to repress. This, with
the continuance of serfdom, caused such a discontent that

246 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1381

John Ball began to travel through the eastern counties before
1366, preaching that things would never go well until the
serfs should become equal to the lords and all things be in
common. "Are we not all sprung from the same parents?

When Adam delved and Eve span
Where then was the gentleman ?

Why should lords and ladies wear velvet and ermine and
we coarse cloth ? Why should they eat fine wheaten bread
and drink wine, while we have only rye meal and water ? It
is by our labor that they live." Ere long he adopted some of
Wycliffe's views, so that he was imprisoned as a heretic in
1381. Already the indignation at the poll taxes imposed in
1379 and 1380 had become so great that letters were flying
about saying :

" John Ball greeteth you all,
And he hath rung your bell.
Now right and might, will and skill,
God speed every dele."

" Jack the miller asketh help to turn his mill aright
He hath grounden small, small ;
The King's Son in heaven shall pay for all."

In May, 1381, the indecency indulged in by the collectors,
under pretext of finding out the girls' ages, made a revolt in
Essex, and men from this county and others north of the
Thames were soon marching upon London. On June 5,
Walter the Tyler, so called from his business of roofing with
tiles, killed a collector who was insulting his daughter in Dart-
ford, Kent. His neighbors called on him to lead them to
London and get justice from the king. On the two mobs
went, gathering strength in every hamlet, breaking open jails,
burning records, especially in monasteries, and killing the law-
yers. Both armies reached London on June 13 ; when that
from Essex, Suffolk, and Cambridge was persuaded to disperse
by the royal promise of redress and amnesty. Wat Tyler
and the men of Kent entered at the invitation of the city

1381] WTCLIFFE AND HIS FOLLOWERS. 247

artisans, set John Ball free, burned Lancaster's palace, flinging
a rioter who dared to plunder into the flames, beheaded the
archbishop of Canterbury as a criminal, and put to death
several high officials with many foreign merchants. On Sat-
urday the 17th, the Lord Mayor assassinated Tyler during a
pretended negotiation, in the presence of King Richard, who
then persuaded these rebels also to disband, by guaranteeing
that all their wrongs should be righted, and no one else put
to death. Scarcely had they, too, gone home, when all the
royal promises were revoked ; thousands of peasants were
hung that summer and autumn, as was John Ball on July 15.
John the Dyer, who made noblemen serve him on bended
knee, and called himself King of Norwich, was put down by
the warlike bishop of that diocese. Serfdom, however, died
out rapidly, and no such attempts to collect taxes were ever
made again in England.

John Ball confessed before his execution that he had been
for two years a follower of Wycliffe, whose attacks on clerical
endowments had been much praised by the rioters, and whose
institution of unlicensed preachers now seemed dangerous to
the public peace. It was on their account that hostility now
arose between the reformer and the friars, who were further
provoked at his attacking transubstantiation, and asserting
that the bread and wine remained really present in the com-
•munion elements together with the body and blood of Jesus,
a view much like that afterward held by Luther. Even this
was going too far for some of Wycliffe's friends, while others
regretted his turning aside from more dangerous errors. His
twelve theses about the eucharist were condemned by the
Oxford theologians in 1381, in which year Parliament ordered
that all sheriffs be henceforth sworn to " suppress the errors
and heresies commonly called Lolleries," an oath which was
exacted as late as 1626, though its observance had then come
to mean, for nearly seventy years, the destruction of the
Church of England. On May 17, 1382, the Earthquake
Council, so called from a shock which occurred that day, met
in the Dominican convent, which gave a name to Blackfriars
and which stood where the London Times now has its office,

248 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1382

and condemned twenty-four articles opposed to transubstan-
tiation, to the right of prelates to excommunicate, of clergy-
men to hold property, and of friars to ask for alms, to the
necessity of the papacy or of episcopal ordination, to the
sanctity of sacraments performed by vicious priests, and to
the institutions of the mass and the confessional. Many
Wycliffite preachers were driven to submission and temporary
silence that summer, under a pretended Act of Parliament,
which was pronounced null and void in October, because the
Commons declared they had not sanctioned it. Hereford, who
had helped translate the Bible, now appealed to the pope at
Rome, where he was imprisoned until released by the populace
in 1385. Wycliffe appears to have been summoned thither,
but the favor of the king's wife and mother as well as of the
men of the eastern counties, who are said to have been one half
Lollards, prevented him from having to do more than appear
in person at a synod in Oxford in November, 1382. About
this time he petitioned Parliament to open a way of escape
from monastic vows, tax the clergy, and grant liberty in the
pulpit. Soon after he wrote his famous Trilogus, a Latin
dialogue where Truth and Wisdom declare, in opposition to
Falsehood, that the pope is Anti-christ, his infallibility the
abomination of desolation, and his indulgences blasphemies;
that transubstantiation is a heresy, the confessional and the
mendicant orders evils, and church endowments contrary to
the law of Christ ; that there is no mediator or intercessor but
Jesus ; that the Bible is above all other authorities, and that
there should be no restraint on setting forth its truth. Perse-
cutions in previous centuries Wycliffe nowhere seems to regret,
nor does he give reason more than a subordinate place, but
distinctly condemns those who claim a special inspiration en-
abling them to find a new and peculiar meaning in the Bible,
as false disciples. He was no Mystic or rationalist, and his-
views of predestination resembled Luther's and Calvin's, but
he did not hold their doctrine of justification by faith. His
demand for liberty to read and expound the Bible, as well as
his attacks on clerical endowments, the confessional, and the
authority of bishops and popes gave powerful, though unde-

1395] WTCLIFFE AND HIS FOLLO WEES. 249

signed, aid to the cause of free thought ; and his own special
work for biblical authority was so well organized, as not to be
interrupted by his death. This took place the last day of
1384, in consequence of a paralytic stroke suffered while hear-
ing mass.

His cause went on prospering during the rest of the cen-
tury. Lancaster asserted before Parliament, in 1390, the
right of the people to the Bible in their own tongue, the
Statutes against Provisors and of Prcemunire were renewed
shortly afterward, and the Lollards petitioned in 1395, the
time of their greatest strength, against the temporal power,
transubstantiation, auricular confession, vows of chastity,
prayers for the dead, pilgrimages, exorcism, and other abuses,
which they wished to have thoroughly reformed as com-
manded by the New Testament. Similar aims inspired two
anonymous poems written about this time, Piers Plowman's
Crede, which is marked by its disbelief in the monks, and the
Plowman's Tale, where the Pelican, who represents the re-
formed Church, is assisted by the Phoenix to destroy the pap-
acy, which is typified in the Griffin, for whom fight the birds
of prey. The author of the work thus imitated, the Plow-
mail's Vision, had already given it its final form, though he
survived to write about the deposition of Richard II. in 1399,
as a punishment for attempting to make himself absolute.

The great name in early English literature of course is
Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, which he left unfinished at
his death in 1400, have nothing of the moral and religious
purpose of the works just mentioned, but seek simply to give
interesting pictures of contemporary life. This makes it all
the more noteworthy, that his pilgrims, among whom are sev-
eral monks and nuns, amuse themselves with licentious stories,
that rakes and swindlers preponderate among his clergymen,
and that the best friend to virtue and piety in the party is a
Lollard. This character is indeed represented as preaching in
favor of the confessional, but his language is in great part
taken from a book written a century before by a French
monk ; and the Parson's Tale is so much longer than the
others, as well as so excessively dull, that there is much in

250 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1401

favor of the opinion advanced by Mr. H. Simon in an essay
published by the Chaucer Society, that some unscrupulous
Romanist has made interpolations in the interest of the
Church. It is undoubtedly Chaucer who makes the Wife of
Bath rest nobility on character, not birth, so that those who
do gentle deeds are gentlemen, and he who acts vilely is a
churl, though born a duke, and who speaks strongly for fe-
male capacity in his Legend of Good Women, as well as in
the Tale of Meliboeus.

During the fourteenth century the Lollards had suffered
l)ut little persecution, owing largely to their submissive be-
havior under arrest. On February 24, 1401, a priest named
Sautre, was sent, for revoking his recantation, to the stake at
Smithfield, near London, by Henry IV., whose desire to
strengthen his weak title by clerical support led him next
month to sanction the passage of the Act for Burning Here-
tics. The first victim under this statute, a tailor named John
Badby, was burned in a barrel on February 26, 1410. In the
previous year the circulation of the Bible in English, of
Wy cliff e's other works, and of unlicensed publications gener-
ally, had been strictly forbidden by the Convocation of Cler-
gy. Disobedience to this edict caused Sir John Oldcastle,
Lord Cobham, to be sent to the Tower, in 1413, by Henry V.,
whose boon-companion he had formerly been, according to a
story followed by Shakespeare in his earliest version of the
First Part of Henry IV. On his trial on September 25,
Oldcastle said : " For the sins of my youth I was never
blamed by these priests, but see how I am troubled for show-
ing dislike of their traditions." Then he avowed his agree-
ment with Wycliffe, and thanked him for help in becoming
virtuous. Citizens of London enabled him to escape to Wales,
where he was hidden for three years, though a thousand
marks were set upon his head ; but December 14, 1417, saw
him hanging from a gallows over the flames. A law of
1414 had enabled the secular courts, as well as the episcopal,
to condemn heretics, and executions were frequent for more
than a hundred years in both England and Scotland, so that
Erasmus complained, in 1511, of the incidental rise in the cost

1410] THE BOHEMIANS. 251

of fuel. But Lollardism continued strong enough to do much
to cause the insurrections under Jack Sharp in 1431, and Jack
Cade in 1450. And we shall find Luther's great protest even
more welcome in England than Germany.

in.

•

Nowhere were the tendencies of the Bible movement more
clearly manifested than in Bohemia, which the marriage of a
Czech princess to Richard of England brought under the in-
fluence of Wycliffe's writings before 1390. Among their
open admirers was John Huss, who became a popular preacher
in Prague at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and in
1405 exposed the pretended miracles ascribed to some sacra-
mental wafers, covered with red animalcules, but supposed to
be stained with the blood of Christ. Four years later he de-
prived the Germans, who hated Wycliffe, of the control of his
University, and they left it to found that of Leipsic. Earn-
estly did he strive to persuade the pope and prelates to re-
form the Church, but they excommunicated him in Prague,
July 18, 1410, two days after publicly burning Wycliffe's
books. These works he at once defended openly, and spoke
so vehemently in Bethlehem Chapel against the pope's
charges that his hearers shouted, " He lied." He asked if
they would stand by him, and they answered, " We will ! "
The pope put Prague under an interdict, but Huss and most
of the other clergymen went on holding public worship. He
refused to go to Rome for trial, appealed publicly from the
pope to Jesus, and wrote on the walls of his chapel, " No ex-
communication can harm the innocent."

In May, 1412, came the sellers of indulgencies, promising
safety from purgatory to whoever would contribute to a
crusade against Naples. Huss announced a public discus-
sion before the University on June 7, when he and his friend
Jerome maintained, that it was contrary to the Bible for the
Church to levy war, or to sell forgiveness to the impenitent.
On the 24th, a procession of armed students marched past the
royal and archepiscopal palaces, escorting a comrade, dressed

252 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND CO [1414

like a harlot and bearing on his bosom the pope's bull of in-
dulgence, which at last was burned publicly. Soon after-
ward they turned out again for the burial at Bethlehem
Chapel of three young mechanics, beheaded on July 11 for
interrupting the traffic in pardons on the Sunday previous.
Huss was now persuaded by the king to leave Prague for re-
tirement, in which he wrote De Ecclesia. Here he says that
Jesus is the only Head of the Church, that the papal power
comes from the emperor, that an infallible pope would be a
fourth person in the Trinity, that only the elect belong to the
true Church, and that the clergy must be reformed by the
State. He did not oppose the concessional, or clerical endow-
ments, or transubstantiation, and it was largely due to his-
moderation that he carried nearly all Bohemia with him.

Only zeal for his cause led him to attend the council of
Constance, whither he went, asking only for free speech and
expecting to be put to death. Neither his safe conduct from
the emperor, nor his guard of honor, prevented hi&
treacherous arrest by the pope and cardinals on Novem-
ber 28, 1414, or his confinement for six months without a
trial, his first prison being a convent where he nearly lost his
life from bad air, and his second a castle in which his
feet were fettered, and his arms chained every night to the
wall. Plainly did the council declare, as the Church of Rome
has always done, that no faith should be kept with heretics.
Heresy, it must be remembered, consists not so much in hav-
ing embraced peculiar views, as in refusing to give them up
when commanded. The council, while censuring the d
spect of Huss for the papacy with a violence scarcely to be
expected in the dethroners of three popes, and further blaming
his censure of persecution and his fondness for Wycliffe,
differed from its victim mainly as to its right to compel him
to recant. This he refused to do, because some of the
propositions complained of seemed to him scriptural, and
others were not really his, so that he could not say he
renounced them without committing perjury. Here he dif-
fered from those Episcopalians who say they renounce the
devil, though they do not believe that he exists. Steadily he

141o] THE BOHEMIANS.

ed all threats and entreaties at his trial, Jun
8, during the month given him for consideration, at the full
session in which he was sentenced, and even at his execution
which took place forthwith, on Saturday, July 6, 1415, a day

sacred in Bohemi t he taught is of little import-

ance compared with his being the, first to defy the highest au-
thority in the Church, and to give his body to the flames rather
than say he renounced what he had never believed. He did
not call himself a free-thinker, but he stands high among our
martyrs, and his paper miter with its painted devils was really
the cap of lib-

In Bohemia there was great indignation, which increased
as Jerome of Prague also was burned, May 30, 1416. A
convenient emblem had already been furnished by another
Bohemian, Jacob or Jacobel of Mies, who discovered before
the close of 1414, that the Bible gives all Christians a right to
the communion cup. This view was condemned at Constance,
but was sanctioned by the University of Prague on March 10,
. after which the mode of celebration known as utraquism
became general. Insult to a procession of the friends of the
cup, on Sunday, July 30, 1419, caused Zizka to lead them to

aughter of seven of Prague's magistrates. The king's

death shortly after was followed by a general plunder of

churches and cloisters, so that Bohemia was flooded by coins,

made from candlesticks and chalices, and thence called caly-

The next heir, that Sigismnnd who had betrayed Huss

nstance, refused to grant the demands made by the citi-
zens of Prague, that each communicant should partake of the
wine or not as he might cLoose ; that all observances should
be regulated by the opinions of those immediately concerned ;
that clergymen should have no office in the State ; and that the
word of God should be freely preached. Both parties now
prepared for hostilities which began on November 4, by
the royal troops dispersing a party of armed pilgrims, close to
Prague, where a bloody contest followed, the rebels being
again led by Zizka, who gained two victories over vastly
superior forces early in 1420, by his invention of a movable
fort, made by chaining together wagons fitted with very high

254 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND CO UNCILS. [1420

sides and filled with musketeers. He was the first general
to use gunpowder with effect ; his officers ranked accord-
ing to ability and fidelity without regard to birth ; the soldiers
were drilled as no others had been for centuries ; pillaging,
gambling, drunkenness, and outrages on women were sup-
pressed as they never were among the crusaders ; and prosti-
tutes were excluded with a strictness unknown at Rome, or
Avignon, or even in Constance during the great council. The
same purity was enforced in the city of Tabor, which he
founded at this time for his adherents, who gave up most of
the Romish ceremonies, especially auricular confession, pray-
ers to the saints, and masses for the dead; rejected many doc-
trines not in the Bible, for instance purgatory ; held public
worship in the Czech language, without gorgeous vestments
and in any place convenient; permitted women to preach and
working men to celebrate the Lord's supper, of which even
children partook ; kept no day but Sunday ; called each other
brother and sister ; had every body taught to read and write,
and governed themselves democratically. So indeed, did the
more moderate citizens of Prague and other large towns, who
are known as Calixtines because they insisted chiefly on the
cup. To this latter party belonged most of the nobles.
Taborites and Calixtines united to defend Prague in 1420
against Sigismund, who brought nearly a hundred thousand
crusaders from every part of Western Europe. His attempt
to capture what was thenceforth called Zizka's Mountain,
failed through the resistance made by twenty-six men and three
women on Sunday, July 14, when the red-cross knights were
driven back by the Hussite cannon. The victors now bound
themselves to maintain the famous Four Articles, namely, the
cup for all Christians, liberty of preaching, confiscation of
church property, and reformation of all sins and abuses con-
trary to Scripture. The crusaders soon dispersed, and their
friends were conquered by Zizka, so that Sigismund had to
retire from Bohemia, early in 1421. That June the diet of
Caflau made Zizka regent with another Taborite, five knights,
five nobles, and eight representatives of various cities. The
archbishop had already joined the Calixtines, who had many

1421] THE BOHEMIANS. 255

friends in Moravia, Silesia, Saxony, and Poland. No opposi-
tion was made to transubstantiation before 1421, when a
Taborite called Hauska, or Loquis, denied the real presence
and was flung into boiling oil by the orders of Zizka, who had
already sent two parties of men and women to the flames,
which they entered smiling in hope of reigning that day with
Him who never stooped from heaven to become a bit of bread.
Similar unwillingness to worship the host provoked the Tab-
orites to the destruction with fire and sword, before the end
of 14^1, of a colony of Mystics who were called Adamites, and
charged with worshiping naked and having their women in
common, but who apparently did nothing worse than claim to
be led by immediate inspiration like Adam. Their island, in
the river near Tabor, was only taken after a desperate defense
led by a blacksmith named Rohan. Thus the most devoted
followers of the Bible thought themselves justified in persecu-
tion. Meantime a second host of crusaders, who had com-
mitted the worst of outrages on the peasantry, fled at the ap-
proach of Zizka, who became totally blind on March 29, 1421r
but was able on the sixth of January following to rout Sigis-
mund's great army of Hungarians and Moravians, whom he
surprised in winter quarters. Soon after, the Taborites and
Calixtines began mutual hostilities, which were interrupted in
the summer of 1423 by the appearance of the third horde of
crusaders, who scarcely dared to enter Bohemia. The next
year is called the bloody one, because Zizka slaughtered the
Calixtines cruelly, and was with difficulty persuaded not to-
sack Prague.

After his death October 11, 1424, his immediate followers
called themselves Orphans, and accepted no other permanent
leader, though they readily co-operated with the other Tabor-
ites, who soon found almost as brilliant a general, and a much
more tolerant and far-sighted statesman in Procopius. Early
in 1426 we find Taborites, Orphans, Calixtines, and Catholics
in council together at Prague, and on February 6, Procopius
and his followers declared that they were fighting only to de-
fend their country, and would gladly be at peace with all who
would permit the observance of the Four Articles. On Sun-

256 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND CO UNGILS, [1431

day, June 1C, the city of Aussig was recovered from the Ger-
mans, whose chivalry was routed by the peasants' cannonade.
Next year another crusade ended a new panic, as did the fifth
and last of these ecclesiastical invasions in 1431. Bohemia
had now determined to force her neighbors to make peace.
Austria and Bavaria were overrun in 1428, Saxony devastated
the next year, Nuremberg and Bamberg forced to ransom
themselves in 1430, Berlin threatened in 1432, and the Or-
phans' banner carried to the Baltic in 1433.

The Church now saw for the first time the necessity of tol-
erating heresy, at least temporarily. In October, 1431, the
Hussites were invited by the council of Basel to send ambas-
sadors, who should have every privilege, even that of holding
public worship. On Sunday, January 4, 1432, fifteen leading
Calixtines, Taborites, and Orphans entered the city, which had
been purified for their reception by the suppression of public
dancing, gambling, and street-walking. The citizens saw
worship held with the utmost simplicity, and heard the new
views preached in German. All Christendom knew that car-
dinals, Dominicans, and doctors of divinity were talking the-
ology, feasting, and even going to church with men who
had disowned the pope, abolished almost all the ritual,
plundered monasteries, and massacred crusaders. Three
months were spent in debates held in the Dominican
convent, where Procopius defended the use of the cup, the
Taborite bishop denounced the sins of the Church, Peter
Payne, an Englishman, attacked the temporal power, and
another of the Orphans pleaded for a free pulpit. The Huss-
ites were charged with saying that Satan had founded the
monastic orders. " I did tell Cardinal Cesarini so in private,"
answered Procopius. " But let me ask this. You claim that
the bishops represent the Apostles, and the priests the seventy
disciples, but there is nothing in the New Testament in favor
of those able-bodied monks, who live in idleness rather than
work. Whence can they come except from the devil ? "
Another time the great Taborite on being asked, " Who can
interpret the Bible better than a council like this ? " answered,
"Each man's conscience must be his own interpreter." In

14;; 1 ] THE GEE A T CO UNCILS. 25 7

November, 1433, the envoys of the council announced to the
Diet of Prague, that the Church would permit all Christians in
Bohemia and Moravia to partake of the chalice. Heresy had
conquered the Church.

The Bohemian nobles now determined to restore Sigismund,
and put down the Taborites and other democrats. Procopius
had resigned his command in consequence of being wounded
in the face and imprisoned by his own soldiers, among whom
success had brought many reckless adventurers, but he
returned to his post, and fell with 13,000 warriors in the
fratricidal battle of Lipan, August 30, 1434. Tabor held out
until 1452, just before which time a future pope describes it as
" a place where there are as many heresies as heads, and every
man may believe what he likes." The fierce sect was after-
ward merged in the meek Moravians. Peace was finally es-
tablished in the Diet of Iglau, on July 5, 1436 ; and the com-
munion was celebrated in both ways for nearly two centuries,
despite the opposition of Pius II., the pontiff just referred to.
Thus was Bohemia the first Christian nation to protest against
this privilege of the priests, and assert the right of each
individual to worship as he pleases. In that blood-stained
chalice lay preciou- seeds.

IV.

While English and Bohemian reformers were being driven
out of the Church, pious Frenchmen tried to reform her from
within. The University of Paris declared to the king on Janu-
ary 25, 1394, that the rival popes at Rome and Avignon should
both resign, or a general council must bo called. The French
clergy asserted their independence in 1398, and Benedict XIII.
was besieged that fall at Avignon. Neither he nor his Italian
opponent would resign, and at last the cardinals on both sides
united in calling the council of Pisa. This lasted from March
25 to August 7, 1409, and was largely attended by French,
English, German, and Italian bishops, abbots, and professors.
Its leader, Bishop d'Ailly, the Eagle of France, boldly asserted
its supremacy : and so did another prominent Nominalist,

258 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCIL. [1431

Gerson, chancellor of the University. His tracts in favor of
the absolute sovereignty of a general council, and its right to
depose popes, had great influence, but his presence at Pisa is
almost as doubtful as his authorship of the Imitation of Christ.
(Schwab, Johannes Gerson, pp. 231, 244, 782.)

The councildeclared its supremacy on May 29, deposed both
popes on June 5, and chose a new one on June 26. Its choice
was not universally accepted, and thus there were three heads
to the Church. To end this schism, and check the rapid
growth of heresy and immorality, the emperor persuaded John
XXIIL, successor of the Pisan pope, to call the council of
Constance.

This opened November 5, 1414, and was attended by about
fifty cardinals and archbishops, some two hundred bishops, as
many abbots, nearly four hundred doctors of divinity,
twenty-eight kings and princes, more than six hundred
barons, one hundred and sixty ambassadors, mostly from the
universities and free cities, and seven hundred and eighteen
harlots. About eighteen thousand of the clergy were
present, and every Western nation sent delegates. Pope John
soon took fright and fled, dressed as a groom. Three days
later, March 23, 1415, Gerson preached, at the request of the
other Frenchmen and the emperor, a sermon declaring the
superiority of a general council to the pope, and its right, not
only to meet without his consent, but to depose him in order
to end the schism. Similar propositions were passed on March
29, and more deliberately on April 6, by the whole council
which now declared its power to reform the Church in both
head and members. Pope John was arrested by German
soldiers, was found guilty of heresy, simony, fraud on poor
students, rape of nuns, adultery, and poisoning his predecessor.
He was deposed on May 29 ; a second pope resigned on July
4 ; and Benedict found no support, though he was not deposed
until two years later.

Thus was the schism ended by this council, which would
have made the Church a limited monarchy, if the plan adopted
on October 9, 1417, of having such meetings held at regular
intervals, even without the papal consent, could have been

1431] THE GREAT COUNCILS. 259

carried out. Gerson and d'Ailly took the lead in all these
proceedings, and also in the condemnation, not only of
Wycliffe's books but of his bones, May 4, 1415, and in the
burning, two months later, of John Huss. Then this procla-
mation was posted up : " The Holy Ghost to the Fathers at
Constance, Greeting ! Do your work as you can. I have busi-
ness elsewhere." Scarcely had the council finished burning
heretics, and deposing pontiffs, when it found itself subject
to a pope of its own making, and obliged to close on April 22,
1418, without doing much for reform, except proposing future
gatherings.

Accordingly a third great council opened at Basel, on
August 27, 1431, and in such a temper that the pope tried to
transfer it to Italy. The messenger bearing his bull was im-
prisoned ; the council declared, on April 29, 1432, its indissolu-
bility except by its own consent ; and the decrees of Constance,
including that providing for decennial gatherings thenceforth,
were reaffirmed, provincial synods arranged, and threats of de-
position freely uttered. Bohemia had been reconciled by
almost unexampled tolerance, before Pope Eugenius sanctioned
the sessions. This was early in 1434, when one hundred
bishops and abbots had met with eight hundred other
clergymen. Attempts to prevent his extorting money,
making his nephews cardinals, issuing interdicts, and
appointing prelates, soon revived his hostility and divided the
council. Many members of high rank withdrew, and with
them Nicholas of Cusa, who afterward tried to revive the Pytha-
gorean theory of the motion of both earth and sun round a
common center, as well as to establish the system of philosophy
which was developed into Pantheism by Giordano Bruno.
Eugenius was suspended on January 4, 1438, soon after call-
ing together a rival council, which advised all Christians to
plunder merchants carrying goods to Basel, because the
Wisdom of Solomon says, " Therefore the righteous spoiled
the ungodly, and praised thy holy name, O Lord." The
bishop of Strasburg persuaded a band of six thousand robbers
to march against the council, but they were cut off by his
peasants. The Church was once more divided, as were the

260 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND CO UN GILS. [1431

nations, England holding with the pope, Germany being neu-
tral, and France being with the council, as appeared in the
re-enactment of her Pragmatic Sanction, in 1438.

A fatal error was committed on June 25, 1439, when Eugenius
was deposed by less than forty bishops and abbots, and three
hundred of the lower clergy, the latter now holding the main
control. Basel was already smitten by a pestilence, which slew
five thousand people there, and is still commemorated in the pic-
tures of the Dance of Death ; but many of the fathers still held
their post. On November 5, the Duke of Savoy was made
pope, but Felix refused to pay his own expenses, and the
council was obliged to sanction the very extortions they had
condemned. Even France refused to plunge into a second
schism ; and only the heroism of the Swiss prevented her army
from capturing*Basel in 1444. Two years later Germany was
brought to declare against the council by the craft of ^Eneas
Silvius Piccolomini, who had taken part in the deposition and
defended it in a History, to which he afterward added another,
written from the opposite standpoint. The emperor forced
Basel to give up sheltering the council, and it emigrated in
1448 to Lausanne, where it dissolved itself on May 7, 1449,
after accepting the abdication of Pope Felix the Unlucky, and
confirming the recent election of his rival, Nicholas V. This
pontiff quietly disregarded all that was done at Basel, and
^Eneas Silvius, when he became Pope Pius II., openly repudi-
ated, not only his own words in the council, but also its de-
crees of supremacy, the Pragmatic Sanction, and the grant
of the cup to the Hussites, who, however, were protected by
their king, George Podiebrad. All the old abuses went on
unchecked, and reform from within seemed hopeless. Coun-
cils could do much in a schism, but nothing against a regular
pope. The papacy was too much revered to be restricted
constitutionally. Henceforth the only choice lay between
despotism and revolution. Real reform must begin by throw-
ing off the papal yoke.

1431] JOAN OF ARC AND OTHER MYSTICS. 261

v.

That form of Mysticism which had freed itself from sub-
jection to the Bible, the Church, or any other authority but
that of individual inspiration, was now taught by the vir-
tuous and eloquent Joan of Aubenton, who was burned at
Paris in 1373, with others of the Brothers and Sisters of the
Free Spirit, who in France were called Tuiiupins, probably
because they had to hide like wolves in the woods. A similar
sect, that of the " Men of Understanding," was propagated in
Belgium, by an illiterate man, called Giles the Singer, and a
scholarly monk, William of Hildesheim, who was charged at
his compulsory abjuration, in 1411, with having taught, that
there is no resurrection of the body, that all tnen and angels
will be saved, that sin does not stain the soul, and that Chris-
tianity was then to be superseded by the reign of the Holy
Ghost.

Penitential scourging without permission of the Church
had been introduced in 1260, and kept up despite papal prohi-
bition ; and in 1414 the Saxon Flagellants were found so con-
fident of their ability to save themselves, and of the worth-
lessness of ecclesiastical sacraments, that Conrad Schmidt was
burned with one hundred and twenty of his followers. Those
German Mystics who were affiliated with the. Waldenses suf-
fered cruel persecutions at Mainz in 1395, at Strasburg in 1420,
and at Worms and Spire soon afterward, in all which cities they
were known as Winkelers, or dwellers in corners. Another type
of German Mysticism, which was more friendly to the Church,
though not dependent on her guidance, is expressed in the
Theologia Germanica, probably written shortly before 1370,
and published with high praise by Martin Luther in 1516.
The aim is to show that the highest religious life may be led
without depending on priest or sacrament, as well as without
opposing them to the extent done by the Brethren and Sisters
of the Free Spirit. The same love of conformity without
servility characterizes the Imitation of Christ, which the best
authorities suppose to have been written by the Dutch monk,

262 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1431

Thomas a Kempis, about 1425, and which has been more
read by Christians than any other book, except the Bible.
The best known Mystic in the latter half of the fourteenth cen-
tury, with the exception of the docile and philanthropic
Catherine of Siena, is Nicholas of Basel, a pious layman who
has been supposed to have been Tauler's spiritual guide. He
was probably too young for this office, however, and the best
authorities do not hold that he ever claimed it. He did found
the Friends of God, a secret society of men and women who
were willing, like Tauler, to use the church sacraments as
help to cultivate an independent but friendly spirituality.
Such companies existed in various cities on the Rhine, and the
visits and letters of Nicholas were received with the strictest
secrecy, his messenger to Strasburg, for instance, being wont
to make himself known by a peculiar kind of cough, in the
church frequented by the brethren. The most advanced dwelt
on a hill between Basel and Constance, under shelter of a
papal permission obtained in 1377 by Nicholas in a personal
interview with Gregory XL, then much under the influence of
the saintly Catherine. These recluses were so excited by the
Great Schism as to hear angelic voices and receive other
supernatural revelations of the speedy end* of the world.
This fate Nicholas began to preach openly in 1383, but soon
found his own at the stake in Vienne near Lyons. One of his
disciples, a priest named Martin, met the same fate at Cologne
in 1393, on a charge of placing him above the Apostles or the
Ten Commandments.

Shortly afterwards a famous instance was seen at Orleans
of martial courage and military genius, developed in an illite-
rate peasant girl, under the joint stimulus of patriotic fervor
and faith in special revelations through angels and saints.
Joan of Arc is described as having a large, powerful, and well
proportioned body, a round face, large gray or brown eyes, very
email mouth and chin, very white complexion, chestnut hair,
and a soft voice. (Hirzel, Jeanne cTArc, p. 10, in Virchow und
Holtzerdorf's Vortrage, vol. x.)

All accounts agree that she had no feminine weakness, ex-
cept a great readiness to weep. She was only thirteen when

1431] JOAN OF AliC AND OTHER MYSTICS. 263

she began to have visions of the warrior-angel, Michael, and
the virgin-patronesses, Catherine and Margaret. At first they
merely bade her be a good girl and go to church, but ere long
they told her Go"d would send her to drive the English out of
France, then almost wholly in their power. Of these appa-
ritions she said nothing, even to her pastor or her parents,
though in other respects she was a docile Catholic to the
last. In May, 1428, she spoke for the first time of her mis-
sion. This was to a French officer at Vaucouleurs, in Lor-
raine, where she met several repulses, but was finally given a
a horse, male attire, necessary to her safety among soldiers,
and an escort to her sovereign. To him she declared, on March
8, 1429, that she was sent to free Orleans, then likely to be
captured, see him crowned at Rheims, and drive out the En-
glish. Six weeks were spent in deliberations, among whose re-
sults was the full sanction of her mission by the archbishop of
Rheims and other clergymen. During this time she was
probably taught to ride and use weapons. The duke of
Alen9on afterward testified that he saw her practicing with
the lance, and was so much pleased with her dexterity as to
give her a horse. (Quicherat, Proems de Jeanne d'Arc, volume
iii. page 92). This prince also speaks highly of her knowledge
of war, especially in the management of artillery. Nothing
contributed more to her success than the strict moral and re-
ligious discipline under which she kept her troops.

I need not tell how she raised the siege of Orleans, taking
herself the lead in storming the English bastions on May 6
and 7, how on June 18, she won a pitched battle against Tal-
bot and Fastolf, or how she brought her rather reluctant mon-
arch to Rheims, where she saw him crowned on Sunday, July
17. Her attempt to take Paris the next September failed,
owing partly to the king's retreating after the first repulse.
After this she was not entrusted with any large body of troops.
On May 24, 1430, she was taken prisoner by the Burgundians,
and sold to the English a few months afterwards.

Early in 1431 their tool, Bishop Cauchon, had her tried at
Rouen, for sorcery, heresy, and disobedience to both Bible
^.nd Church. The king, whom she had saved, made no attempt

264 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND CO UHVIL8. [1431

to rescue her by force, ransom, or appeal to Rome, and did
not even send her a lawyer, while the archbishop of Rheims
declared, possibly not altogether without truth, that her fate
was a judgment on her refusing to take advice. The bishop
left her in the hands of soldiers, whose licentiousness strength-
ened her determination to retain her male dress. He meant
to make her out guilty of violating Deuteronomy^ xxii., 5,
" The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a
man, * * * for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord
thy God," and so transgressing canons similar to laws still in
force. She was repeatedly asked, during twenty-four hear-
ings, between February 21 and May 24, inclusive, if she would
change her dress, but she refused to do so until permitted by
God and the saints. She also made a fatal admission that she
had given faith to these visions before asking guidance from
the Church. Still her conduct in both respects had been for-
mally sanctioned by the archbishop of Rheims, Bishop
Cauchon's immediate superior. An eminent jurist, who visited
Rouen, declared that for this reason, as well as the neglect to
provide the prisoner with counsel, and the evident intimidation
of the judges by the English, the whole trial was illegal ; on
which the bishop threatened to have him murdered. A clergy-
man who refused to take part in such a mockery of justice
was imprisoned, and menaced with death, as was every judge
or official who gave Joan any help.

The charge of sorcery could not be sustained, for evil spirits
had no power over maidens. That of heresy was pressed with
the most unscrupulous craft. The illiterate peasant was sub-
jected to hour after hour of cross-examination, planned sa
skillfully that trained theologians could scarcely have escaped
condemnation. Learned and impartial prelates who studied
the records twenty-five years later, declared her orthodoxy
blameless. Her devout faith and quick wits often baffled the
most captious questioning. She did not at first understand
what authority was claimed by the pope, but after she did so
she professed such submission to him and desire for his opin-
ion, as ought to have prevented further proceedings without
his sanction. Of councils she knew nothing, but when told

1431] JOAN OF ARC AND OTHER MYSTICS. 265

about that soon to meet at Base), she asked to be judged by it,
a request which the bishop would not suffer to be recorded.
The case really turned on the claim made by him, and the con-
spiring abbots and professors, that Joan should recognize them
as representatives of the visible Church, and adopt their opin-
ion of her visions and her dress. Her refusal to do so was not
strictly heretical in view of the previous decision of the arch-
bishop of Rheims, ami the manifest partiality of the so-called
judges, but it showed the noblest of courage in a friendless
girl, not yet twenty, loaded with chains, suffering from illness^
and in constant danger of death as well as dishonor. Again
and again she said :

"Lord Bishop, you say you are my judge ; I do not know if
you are ; but take heed not to judge badly ; for you would
run in great danger ; and so I warn you that I may have done
my duty, if our Lord should punish you." " I am willing
to testify about what I have done, but I have had
revelations of which I shall not tell you, even if you
cut off my head." Here she refers to a secret seriously affect-
ing the title of her king, who had left her to perish. The
speedy expulsion of the English from France she predicted
so boldly, that Lord Stafford drew his dagger to stab her in
open court, but Warwick staid his hand. " I know that my
king will conquer all France ; I should die, if it were not for
this revelation, which comforts me daily." " I am sent of
God ; I have nothing to do here ; let me go to Him." " I have
taken no man's advice ; I have not worn this raiment or done
aught else, save by command of our Lord and his angels."
All the clergy of Rouen and Paris can not condemn me, un-
less it is just." " If I see the gate open, it will be a dismissal
from the Lord." " If you refuse to let me hear mass, our
Lord is able to let me hear it without you." " As firmly as I
believe that our Lord Jesus Christ has suffered to save me, so
firmly do I believe that our Lord has sent his saints, Michael,
Gabriel, Catherine, and Margaret to comfort and counsel me."
"I honor the Church militant with all my might, but as to
what I have done, I refer myself to the Lord, who made me
do it." " Nothing in the world could make me say that I did

2GG OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1431

not do those deeds in obedience to God." " What He bids me
I will not fail to do, in spite of any man who lives." " If the
Church were to wish to make me do aught contrary to the
word given me of God, I should not consent, whatever may
come to pass." " I think I am obedient to the Church on earth,
but God must first be served." " I await my judge, the King
of heaven and earth."

She was questioned in full view of the instruments of tor-
ture, and said : " If you were to tear off my limbs, I should
say nothing but what I have always done : and even if I
were to, I should always say afterward, that I was forced to
do it." " I have asked my voices, if I ought to submit to the
Church, and they have said, * If you wish to have God help
you, look to Him in all things.' I asked my voices if I am
to be burned, and they answered, ' Trust in our Lord and He
will help you ' ' So dauntless was her courage, that torture
was pronounced useless. As the trial drew near its end, she
said : "As I have always spoken, so I wish to speak still ; if
I saw the fire lighted and were standing in it, I should hold to
all I said, until the death."

False friends begged her to submit, and promised that she
would then be set at liberty, though otherwise she must be
burned. On Thursday, May 24, 1431, she was set on a scaffold,
amid a great crowd of soldiers and people ; before her were
many princes and prelates ; and beside her was the execu-
tioner ready to carry her to the stake. The customary sermon
was preached from, " The branch can not bear fruit of itself
except it abide in the vine." She interrupted the preacher,
when he blamed the king, who had deserted her. Thrice she
was solemnly asked if she would submit to the Church. She
only answered : " I have acted in obedience to God. I refer
myself to Him and to our Holy Father the pope." Then the
bishop began to read her sentence. Midway she broke in
with : " I submit to the Church ; I will do what you wish, I
will 'give up my visions, and dress as other women do." A
statement to this effect, some six or eight lines long, was read
aloud, and repeated by her, and it is testified by eye-witnesses,
that she was tricked into making her mark, not on this paper,

1431] JOAN OF ARC AND OTHER MYSTICS. 267

but at the end of the indictment, in twelve long articles,
charging her with falsehood, worship of evil spirits, idolatry,
blasphemy, heresy, attempt at suicide, etc. She was then told
she was to be imprisoned for life on bread and water. She
begged she might at least be confined in a convent, where she
thought her honor would be safe ; but the bishop had her led
back to the ruffianly soldiers, who soon made her dread the
worst injuries in her change of dress. Before she rose next
Sunday morning, they took away her woman's dress and left
only the man's clothes they had kept ready. She lay until
noon, asking in vain for other garments. At last she rose, and
dressed herself as she could. The next day the judges came
to condemn her, as a relapsed heretic. She said, with many
tears, " I put on this dress, because you have not kept faith in
me. Let me be in a proper prison among women, and I will
be good, and do as the Church bids me." They asked what
her voices said. " That I have committed treason against
God, and damned my soul to save my life. They bade me
answer that preacher boldly. The truth is, that God did send
me." " Do you believe that your voices are those of Saint Mar-
garet and Saint Catherine ? " "Yes, and I believe that they come
from God." " You denied this before the people." " I did
not know it. Whatever I said was in fear of the fire. It was
contrary to the truth. I had rather do penance, once for all,
and die, than stay in prison. I will give up about the dress,
but I can do nothing more." To Cauchon she said : "Bishop,
I die through you. If you had put me in a church prison,
this would not have happened. I appeal from you to God."

On Tuesday, May 30, 1431, she was brought into the pub-
lic square, still called by her name, and after a second sermon,
handed over to the executioner with illegal haste. Many of
the by-standers wept with her, as she bade them pray for
her, and said she forgave those who put her to death, but
that Rouen would suffer judgment. She kept her faith in her
voices to the last, as is attested by her confessor, who stood
by her on the pyre, until she bade him descend, and hold up
the cross before her eyes. Those who see nothing supernat-
ural, either in visions which promised she should take Paris,

268 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1431

drive the English out of France, and escape from prison, or
in victories, plainly due to her dauntless courage and military
genius, as well as to the English superstition, then proverbial,
(O'Reilly, Les Deux P -races de Jeanne cFArc, volume ii., page
406), must give all the more honor to the heroism which made
her victorious over the prejudice against her sex, over con-
quering armies, and finally over judges who professed to hold
the keys of heaven. No one has done more to emancipate
woman. It is well to mention here that the probable year of
her birth, 141*2, was that of the death of the great Queen
Margaret, whose courage, love of justice, and genius for govern-
ment had enabled her to mold Norway, Denmark, and
Sweden into one united kingdom, which she ruled with singu-
lar ability and success. Neither Joan nor Margaret was a free
thinker, but they did much to encourage women to think and
act for themselves.

VI.

The medieval period may be subdivided, in reference to its
enslavement of thought, into five ages. From the destruction
of classic philosophy until 1000 A. D., differences of opinion
are almost unknown in Western Europe, the Paulicians and
Motazalites being too far removed to attract notice, and
Clement, Claudius, and Erigena too far in advance of their
contemporaries. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries,
the common people, especially in France and Italy, are stirred
up against the clergy by an agitation in the name of morality,
which is exerted most powerfully by the stainless Catharists,
who continue to increase, despite frequent executions for
heresy, now for the first time often punished capitally all over
Christendom. Meantime scholars are aroused to unwonted
activity by the attacks on the theory, necessary for the exis-
tence of the Church, of the reality of abstractions made by
Roscellin and Abelard, neither of whom speculates more bold-
ly than Heloise. The twelfth century also produces Aver-
roes, Maimonides, and the Waldenses ; and Moslem, Jewish,
and Christian visionaries are already in close communication.

!mi] RETROSPECT OVER MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 2G9

The third age is that of the rapid spread, despite cruel perse-
cutions, of the Mysticism which we have just seen develop it-
«elf, and which is greatly assisted, not only by that opposition
to rationalism shown in the crusades against the tolerant
Languedocians, the suppression of Catharism by the inquisi-
tion, the imprisonment of Bacon, and the excommunication of
Frederic II., but by those satires on the vices of the clergy
now frequent. Next comes the successful revolt of France
and Germany, in the fourteenth century, against the papacy,
which is reduced to captivity at Avignon, and robbed of its
most faithful servants, the Templars ; while Dante, Eckhart,
Tauler, Ockhain, and Petrarch are enabled to assail it with a
boldness hitherto impossible. Before the close of this century
we see the endless conflict transferred to new territory, as Wy-
«cliffe is unconsciously serving liberty, in setting up the authority
of the Bible against the papacy, already much weakened by
the Avignon scandals, to whose damaging effect is now added
that of the Great Schism. The founders of English litera-
ture, Langland and Chaucer, also do much to help the new
movement, which, however, has little success until trans-
planted to Bohemia, where it gains not only famous martyrs,
but victorious warriors. The red-cross knights dare not
face the Hussite peasants, and the pope's bulls prove power-
less against Zizka's bullets. At last the Church has to make
peace with the heretics, and let them worship as they please.
This unheard of tolerance is due to the temporary sway of
men who wish to reduce the papacy to a limited monarchy,
by establishing not only the supreme authority, but the con-
tinual activity of universal councils. The two movements
against absolutism, in the name of the Bible and of the coun-
cils, have come into fatal antagonism, when Huss is burned by
the men who have dethroned three popes ; and the treaty at
Basel can only check the resulting animosity. Little can be
accomplished by any opposition to the pope so long as it is
believed that however wicked he may be, he holds the keys
of heaven. The last medieval council is dispersed ignomini-
ously, the Lollards are reduced to obscurity, and the Hussites
have finally to submit on all points, except the use of the cup.

270 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND CO UNC1LS. [1450

Mysticism suffers greatly from persecution, and there is but
little reliance on special revelations, and visions unsanctioned
by the Church, after the martyrdom of Joan of Arc. The
year 1450 finds the pope still an absolute monarch, with every
known enemy at his feet. We shall see in the next chapter
that new and dangerous elements of hostility have already de-
veloped undetected.

The Middle Ages are particularly worthy of study, because
they form a period when the Church was more powerful and
Christianity more universally honored than in any century be-
fore or since ; when bishops were princes and popes the mas-
ters of kings and emperors ; when there were scarcely any
grand buildings but churches, or large armies except for cru-
sades; when there was little writing except about theology, or
scholarship outside of monasteries ; when the sick had more
trust in monks and priests than in physicians, and the clergy
stood above the law ; when the Church owned nearly half the
wrealth of Europe, knew all the secrets of every family, and
was looked up to as the main source of happiness here and
hereafter; and when open unbelief was seldom seen and always
punished. All this mighty power the Church wielded in
the name of the Bible and as the representative of Christ.
The ideal of Jesus has never been fully realized, but the Apos-
tles and their successors did their best to embody it as they
thought he wished. They saw the need of resisting persecu-
tion and conquering the heathenism, first of the Roman em-
perors and then of the barbarian invaders, and so they
built up a strong organization, which ultimately found
its needed center in the papacy. They expected to be
saved by faith, and so the bishops were authorized to
meet in councils and declare the correct belief. The people
needed not only instruction but discipline, so power to admin-
ister both was given to the priests, and their fidelity was
watched over by the bishops and popes. I see nothing un-
christian in all this. There was certainly no intention of de-
parting from the teachings of Jesus, but merely of developing
them into the institutions most favorable to Christianity. The
Gospels and Epistles represent the Church as made up, not of

1450] RETROSPECT OVER MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 271

free-thinkers, each of whom believes only what seems true to
him individually, but of teachers and taught, shepherds and
sheep, all believing in the words of Jesus and his Apostles, but
some authorized to tell others wThat to believe and do. These
ten centuries, from about 450 to 1450, were as truly Christian
as any others before or since. Certainly there has never been
a time when Christianity was so little interfered with by
heathenism, worldliness, or unbelief. The prophecy in the
Apocalypse, that the saints were to rule the earth for a thou-
sand years was much more truly fulfilled then, than it has-
been since, or seems likely to be. This was the real millen-
nium. Christianity reigned with such power as she never had
afterward. Let us consider what use she made of it.

One great end aimed at by the Church then, and since also,
has been keeping the people in subjection to their rulers. The
influence of Christianity was certainly directed toward order
and obedience during these thousand years, and this waa
highly beneficial during the first half of the period, when Eu-
rope needed nothing so much as the restoration of stable gov-
ernment. Soon afterward came to be felt a further need,,
namely, that there should be liberty of progress. Now we
find the Church taking sides with the rulers, except when it
was her interest to promote liberty, as was the case in most
parts of Italy. Even there she showed little sympathy with
Rienzi, and her own rule was as despotic as possible. Only
anathemas fell on the pious Englishmen who won Magna
Charta from a godless and vicious tyrant ; and the free cities
of Germany found their bishops their worst enemies. As lib-
erty advanced, the restraining influence of Christian institu-
tions became more and more unfortunate.

Freedom of thought found her natural enemy in the Church.
Before the year 1000, there were few heretics to per-
secute ; but after that we find the executioners, crusaders, and
inquisitors kept busy in checking mental progress. Even men
who wished to avoid heresy, like Bacon and Abelard, were
punished merely for introducing new ideas. Knowledge of
the creed, the ritual, and the canon law, the Church had to
give her priests, in order to maintain her power ; but in pro-

272 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS, [1450

moting all other learning the influence of Judaism and Mos-
lemism was much mightier during the ninth and tenth cen-
turies than that of Christianity. Medical culture is \\\ linly
due to the Hebrews. What education there was in Christen-
dom, even in the fourteenth century, was for the priests rather
than the people at large. It is not to popes and bishops, but
to kings and emperors that we owe the great universities, like
Bologna, Padua, Prague, Salamanca, and probably Paris. For
popular education, however, we must look to Moslem lands.
Christian education was mainly for a privileged few, who were
kept within safe limits by savage punishments for originality,
-and who were prevented from exerting much influence by
being shut up in monasteries, and forbidden to have chil-
dren. The medieval Church treated scholarship just as mod-
ern society does crime. It is true that many books were pre-
served in these monasteries, but I fear that; more were wan-
tonly destroyed. We owe it largely to monkish carelessness,
that few ancient authors have come down to us entire, and
very many survive only in name, while there are sad gaps in
some of the most famous and useful books. Medieval Chris-
tianity found it for her interest to appear more friendly to
knowledge than to liberty, but she did not love it for its own
sake ; nor was this required by the New Testament.

What that book most prizes is morality, and for this the
ancient Church labored faithfully according to her light.
There is little fault to find with her intentions, but some of
her methods were sadly unwise. Too much stress was cer-
tainly laid on rites and creeds, and far too little room given
for free growth. Especially bad was the practice of keeping
all peculiarly virtuous men and women unmarried, and shut
up where they could have little influence. Sanctity, like
scholarship, was hindered from propagating itself through in-
heritance and family life in the Middle Ages, just as crime is
at present. The prohibition of marriage was designed to raise
the clergy above worldly relationships and domestic ties into
living like Christ and the Apostles, but the result was not only
to check the propagation of virtue, but to encourage that of
Tice. Forbidding innocent relations with women brought

1450] RETROSPECT OVER MEDIEVAL HISTORY. 273

about guilty ones. The Eastern Church refused to prohibit
the marriage of her priests, and so kept free from scandal.
The Western Church deliberately took a different course from
her sister's, and persisted in it after its evil results had become
manifest ; because she cared less for purity than power. She
knew that an unmarried clergy was inevitably licentious, but
she also knew that no other would serve her interests so
faithfully. The same wish to be powerful, rather than pure,
caused Becket and other prelates to contend for the immunity
of the clergy before the law, the result being that the teach-
ers of the people became not models of virtue but monsters of
vice. Another pernicious result of the belief, that morality
could be maintained only by keeping up the power of the
Church, was the practice of pious fraud, of which we have
noticed many instances, perhaps the worst being the sys-
tematic acceptance for six hundred years of the False Decre-
tals as the basis of temporal power. All the hundred pontiffs
who sanctioned this forgery before it was disclosed in the
fifteenth century may not have known it to be one, but any
of them could have detected it on examination. In other
cases of pious fraud, the Church must have known that she
was sacrificing morality to power, and wholly without New
Testament authority. Still more plainly was this the case with
the crusades and other consecrated wars which gave a most
unfortunate sanction to some of the worst tendencies of the
age. Wars against heathens and unbelievers were, however,
so far in accordance with the spirit of the Old Testament and
the Apocalypse as not to seem unchristian in the Middle Ages,
despite the inconsistency with the Sermon on the Mount.
But even this loftiest part of the New Testament had noth-
ing to repress another great error of medieval Christianity,
the consecration of beggary, and consequent discouragement
of the industrial virtues. Whether the evil effects of the
mendicant orders, the crusades, the pious frauds, the ex-
emption of the clergy from legal jurisdiction, the check of
sanctity from propagation or domestic influence, and the
profligacy of the priests fully counterbalanced all the good
done by preaching and church discipline, it is hard to say.

274 OPPOSITION IN NAME OF BIBLE AND COUNCILS. [1450

At all events the moral condition of Europe at the time of
the thousand years' Reign of the Saints was not particularly
creditable to medieval Christianity, as must be plain to the
readers of this history, of Dante, or of Boccaccio. Knowl-
edge and liberty were advancing, but it was in spite of the
Church. The plan of educating the people by keeping them
under priests, as sheep following shepherds, had been tried
faithfully, and with scarcely any opposition, for ten centuries,
and, despite some success at first, had on the whole proved
a failure. Europe could not advance either morally, men-
tally, or politically, ur^til some better system came into use*

CHAPTER IX.

THE EEVIVAL OP LEARNING, LITERATURE, AND ART,

1450-1517.

Less than seventy years sufficed to do away with the state
of thought and feeling on which the pope's throne had hith-
erto stood firm, and to establish such mental independence as
opened the way for attacking his supremacy with a success
never before possible.

i.

This momentous change began with a sudden and great
increase of attention to the Latin classics, as well as with a
wholly new interest in the Greek language and literature,
hitherto almost unknown to Western Europe. The brilliancy
of these great authors was extremely valuable in mental
discipline ; their distance from Christianity made escape from
Church authority easy ; the protests against tyranny and
superstition in Plato, Cicero, Lucretius, Seneca, Plutarch,
Lucian, and other ancient philosophers proved singularly well
fitted for drawing attention to existing evils ; study of the
New Testament became possible without resort to commen-
taries written in the papal interest ; and some of the new
school of writers struck deeply and skillfully at monks,
priests, and popes. Thus Christendom had to look back be-
yond its origin in order to learn how to take its first great
step forward.

Study of the Latin classics had been greatly encouraged
during the latter half of the fourteenth century by Petrarch
and Boccaccio, and the latter's pupil, John of Ravenna, had
traveled through the Italian cities, training scholars, who soon
distinguished themselves not only as expounders and transla-

276 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1450

tors, but also as discoverers of almost unknown works by
Cicero, Quintilian, Tacitus, Plautus, and Lucretius. Among
the early patrons in Florence was Coluccio Salutato, who met
the monks' attacks on the classic poets by showing that the
Bible was at best poetry, and sometimes not the most chaste.

Greek had hitherto been studied only by isolated scholars like
Erigena, Heloise, Frederic II., Bacon, Petrarch, and Boccaccio ;
but in 1396 Emmanuel Chrysolaras began to teach it in Flor-
ence, where he found many pupils, as he did afterward in
other cities of Italy. About 1405, Guarino of Verona came
back to teach what he had learned at Constantinople, as soon
after did other Italians, some of whom brought hundreds of
manuscripts, including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides,
Plutarch, Lucian, and the great dramatists. Translations
were eagerly made, especially by that denouncer of clerical
hypocrisy, Leonardo Bruni. The council held at Ferrara and
Florence in 1438, in order to break up that in Basel, though
ostensibly to unite the Eastern and Western Churches, brought
to Italy not only that future cardinal and powerful champion
of Plato, Bessarion, but also that would-be inaugurator of a
new religion based on Neo-Platonism, Gemistus Pletho,
whose principal book was destroyed by the patriarch of
Constantinople about 1455, but whose lectures before Cosimo
dei Medici led to the establishment, later in the century, of
the Platonic Academy. Many other learned Greeks came
over after the capture of Byzantium in 1452, when many
thousand manuscripts perished, and visits from western schol-
ars became very difficult. Generous patronage to letters and
art was now given, not only by the Medici, but by Pope
Nicholas V., who collected the five thousand volumes which
were the basis of the Vatican library, and who had transla-
tions made from Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Chrysostom,
Thucydides, Ptolemy, etc., as well as from the Hebrew and
Greek books of the Bible.

Among the scholars thus employed was Lorenzo Valla,
who at twenty-five had risked his life by exposing the false
pretensions to knowledge of a rival professor at Pavia. Com-
ing thence to Rome about 1443 he published a Dialogue

1450] THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS. 277

inviting men to live according to reason, rather than author-
ity* ^7 suggesting the identity of the laws of virtue with
those of happiness, and brought himself into new danger by
his Declamation on the Donation Falsely and Mendaciously
Ascribed to Constantine. The lies in question had been told,
at least implicitly, by all the popes for six hundred years.
Not only does Valla refute their claims to temporal sover-
eignty, but he denounces them as examples of wickedness, most
unrighteous Pharisees, who sit in Moses's seat and do the
deeds of Dathan and Abiram ; who live like emperors, and
make war on their fellow Christians ; and who will suffer
speedy vengeance, unless they confess their frauds and cease
from usurpation. Only the protection of King Alfonso of
Naples saved .him from the inquisitors, who actually put him
on trial for denying the authenticity, not only of the Creed
still alleged to have been written by the Apostles, but of the
equally fictitious letters between Jesus and Abgarus, and who
had to release their prisoner on his saying, " Mother Church
knows nothing about these matters, but I believe as she
does." While still at Naples he attacked Augustine, in a
treatise on Free-will, which supplied arguments to Leibnitz,
and wrote comments on the Greek Testament which were of
much use to Erasmus. When Nicholas V. assumed the tiara,
in 1447, he summoned Valla to Rome, not to be burned as a
heretic, but to be pensioned, authorized to open a school, and
employed as a translator, in which work he died.

Poggio, too, who brought to light Quintilian, part of Lucre-
tius, eight orations by Cicero, twelve comedies by Plautus,
and several minor authors, qualified himself, by spending fifty
years as papal secretary, for severely censuring the monks and
priests for avarice and hypocrisy. In his Dialogue on the
latter vice the chief speaker is Carlo Marsuppini, known not
so much for his Latin verses as for his refusal to accept the
sacrament on his death-bed. In another Dialogue, about
nobility, he shows that this rests on merit and not birth, with
a plainness worthy of a citizen of Florence, where hereditary
rank was treated as a political crime. His most famous work
is the Liber Facetiarum, a collection of ridiculous stories

278 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1450

about the clergy, which was published during the Jubilee of
1450, and widely circulated. No persecution touched the
author, though soon after attacking clerical avarice, in 1429,
he wrote to a cardinal, who censured his loose morals and ad-
vised him to reform and enter the priesthood, that nothing
worse could be said of him than was openly avowed by abbots,
bishops, and higher dignitaries. This letter closes thus :

" As to your advice on my future plans of life, I am deter-
mined not to assume the sacerdotal office ; for I have seen
many men whom I have regarded as persons of good charac-
ter and liberal dispositions degenerate into avarice, sloth, and
dissipation in the priesthood. Fearing lest this should be the
case with myself, I have resolved to spend the remaining term
of my pilgrimage as a layman ; for I have too frequently ob-
served that your brethrer, at the time of their tonsure, not
only part with their hair, but also with their conscience and
their virtue " (Shepherd, Life of Poggio, p. 200).

Another sign of the times is the rescue in 1452 by an armed
band, sent by a Knight of St. John, of Nicholas of Verona,
then on his way through the streets of Bologna to be burned
for denying that any miracle was wrought by the priests at
the communion. About twenty-five years later Pope Sixtus
saved Galeottus from the stake to which he had been doomed
for saying : " He who lives uprightly and follows the law
that is born in him will go to heaven, whatever may be his
nation."

Among the Humanists, or Friends of Man, as the scholars
of the fifteenth century called themselves, was Stephen Por-
caro, a Roman noble, who was banished for opposing the
papal yoke, to Bologna. There he prepared, by enlisting
three hundred mercenaries and four hundred conspira-
tors of rank in Rome, for setting the papal stables
on fire during the celebration of Epiphany, putting Pope
Nicholas in golden chains, seizing his treasury, the Castle
of St. Angelo, and the Capitol, and proclaiming the Re-
public. Stephen's premature departure from Bologna awoke
suspicion ; soldiers were sent to seek him ; his sister tried
vainly to hide him in a chest on whose lid she sat ; and on

1476] THE EEVIVAL OF LETTERS. 279

January 9, 1453, he went to execution saying, " O my people,
this day dies your liberator ! "

On December 26, 1476, the anniversary of an earlier martyr
of the same name, and in his church at Milan, Duke Galeazzo
Maria Sforza, whose tyranny had become especially galling
through his unbridled sensuality, fell under the daggers of
three young noblemen who had learned to love liberty by
studying Cicero and Plutarch. Two were slain on the spot,
and the third, Olgiati, died in tortures, during which he said
to a priest who urged him to repent : " I have sinned other-
wise, but as to this deed for which I die, it gives my con-
science peace ; and I trust that on this account the universal
Judge will pardon all my other offenses. No base desire led
me, but only the wish to remove a tyrant whom we could
bear no longer. Far from repenting, if I had to come to life
ten times in order to die ten times by these torments, I would
still consecrate all my blood and strength to this noble end."

So revolutionary and rationalistic seemed to be the tenden-
cies of Humanism, that Paul II., the first of five very wicked
popes, declared that icligion and knowledge are natural
enemies, and imprisoned the members of the Roman Academy,
in 1468, on a false charge of treason, for which several were
tortured to death before his eyes.

More fortunate was the Platonic Academy, which began its
meetings at Florence about 1475, and continued them until
1522, when it was thought too incendiary. Its leader, Ficino,
liad been educated for his post by Cosimo dei Medici, and
gave to the press in 1482 one of the best translations of Plato
ever executed. Among the members who celebrated the an-
niversary of the birth and death of the great individualist,
on November 7, were the poet Politian, the architect Alberti,
Machiavelli, and Michael Angelo. Among the visitors was
Count Pico of Mirandola, who in 1486, when but twenty-three,
published in Rome nine hundred theses, for which he was at
once condemned as a heretic by Innocent VIII., though
he was finally absolved by a yet more famous judge of
pure religion, Alexander VI., the father of Caesar and
Lucretia Borgia, as well as of the censorship of the press,

280 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1480

which he inaugurated in 1501. Pico did much to expose
astrology and was busy at the time of his premature death,
1494, trying to reconcile Christianity with Moslemism, and
Judaism, which last he had studied in the Hebrew originals.
Ficino, meantime, was expounding Plato's doctrine of immor-
tality in opposition to Averroism.

This theory, that all souls are too intimately united in es-
sence for the division into individuals to be more than tem-
porary, had been encountered by Petrarch in the fourteenth
century at Venice, one of whose monks asserted it in Bologna,
before the general Chapter of Augustinians in 1429. Five
years later, the fondness of the Marquis of Villena for Aver-
roes and Lucretius had caused the destruction of his library
by Spanish priests. The great strength of Averroism was in
Padua where Vernias taught it publicly from 1471 to 1499,
when he had to recant ; but its character was greatly moder-
ated after its condemnation by the Lateran council, Decem-
ber 19, 1513.

Among the lecturers in support of this scholastic form of
heterodoxy appears in 1480, Cassandra Fidele, one of a score
of learned ladies mentioned by Tiraboschi, who tells us how
famous for their knowledge of Greek were Ippolita Sforza,
and Battista da Montefeltro ; how the latter conquered other
philosophers in discussion, and made orations to the Emperor
Sigismund and Pope Martin V. ; how Isotta, a poetess of Ve-
rona, demonstrated in public discussion, 1451, that Adam was
more to blame than Eve ; and how Lucretia, the mother of
Lorenzo dei Medici, suggested to Pulci his Morgante Magyiore,
the best known poem of the century.

That a new era was opening for women had already been
shown by Joan of Arc and Margaret of Denmark. Let me
speak here of Caterina Sforza, who is called " The First Lady of
Italy." When she married Jerome Riario, Lord of Forli, in>
1477, her hair was brighter than her coronet. His tyranny
forced his subjects to murder him and take her prisoner. The
citadel still held out, and she offered to go, and have it sur-
rendered, leaving her children as hostages. No sooner was
she inside, than she ordered the cannon to be loaded and

1480] THE RE VI VAL OF LETTERS. 281

pointed against the rebels. Her sons were at once threatened
with death, but she shouted from the rampart : "I shall have
others to avenge them." Her friends soon came to her relief,
and she reigned with great ability and energy until 1502,
when, after making a desperate defense, she was dethroned
and imprisoned by the papal general, Caesar Borgia.

One of the purest and bravest of women, Isabella of Castile,
was queen from 1474 to 1504. It is pleasant to think of her
sitting enthroned at Madrid every Friday, to deal justice to
all who asked it, offering to pawn her jewels to fit out Colum-
bus, or riding in armor amid her soldiers to conquer Granada.
But this noble woman was forced by her dark creed to tor-
ture her own daughter for heresy, to let the inquisition enter
Spain in 1480 and burn two thousand victims the next year,
to drive away her most intelligent and industrious subjects, the
Jews, whose number is estimated at least one hundred and
sixty thousand, and to banish the unconverted Moslems, con-
trary to her own plighted faith.

Italy enjoyed from the death of Paul II. in 1471, to the re-
vival of the inquisition by Paul III. in 1542, an unexampled
tolerance, except for the wholesale destruction in the valleys
of the Alps and Appennines of the witches, whose increase
may be attributed to loss of faith in the power of the Church
to control evil spirits, and for a few isolated executions like
that of Savonarola in 1498, and that of Georgio Novara at
Bologna soon after, for denying the divinity of Christ. Doc-
tor da Solo was merely obliged to take back in 1497, his as-
sertions, that Jesus died for crime, that his miracles were
wrought by planetary aid, that he is not present in the sacra-
mental bread, and that Christianity is soon to pass away. The
posthumous publication, in 1480, of a demonstration of the
falsity of the Decretals and the Donation, by Antony of Flor-
ence, did not prevent his canonization in 1523. Boccaccio's
brilliant exposure of clerical corruption was printed at Flor-
ence about 1470, and passed through a dozen editions during
the century, no resistance being made by the Church before
1573, when the pope had the heroes of some of the worst
stories changed from monks and priests to laymen. Among

282 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1480

the countless authors of equally discreditable tales are Ma-
succio, who really hated sin, especially when in the Church,
and Bandello, who had no moral antipathies, and so was made
a bishop, while the early Protestants found plenty of ammu-
nition in his JVbvelle, now best known, like those of his con-
temporary, Cinthio, for the precious ore they supplied to
Shakespeare. Sannazzaro, Mantovano, Pontano, and Michael
Angelo were permitted by Alexander VI. and Julius II. to
write the bitterest of satires against them. Comedy did full
justice to the inferior clergy, who were charged with advising
adultery out of mere avarice in the confessional by Machiavelli
and other scoffers, whose filthy ribaldry was enacted before
the guests of Pope Leo X. and amid his bursts of laughter.
Much as the grossness of these dramas and stories must be
regretted, it was well that women should be put on their
guard against clerical seducers, and that every body should be
shown whither priestly guidance led.

Among the best known of the early laborers in a no less
popular and fertile field was Pulci, a Florentine who, in 1481,
published his Morgante Haggiore, a poem giving the legend
of Charlemagne and his paladins, the special favorites of the
lower ranks of Italian society, with a vivacity which often
runs into an irreverence, contrasting strangely with the pious
phrases which open and close the cantos. Thus Orlando, as
he goes into his last battle against the Moslems at Ronces-
valles, says that all things have their limits, as one rises an-
other falls, and this may be the case with Christianity.

The giant Margutte, a caricature of the irreverent and va-
grant scholar, replies to the question whether he believes in
<3hrist or in Mahomet : " In neither, but in a chicken, whether
roasted or boiled, also in butter, and above all in good old
wine. I have faith that whoso trusts therein will be saved." He
is ready to rob the saints in heaven, if there are any, and he
has, besides all known sins, the theological virtues, namely
perjury and forgery.

Then there is a forerunner of Mephistopheles, Astarotte,
who says that the earth is round and inhabited on both sides,
.as well as that it is very inconsistent for the angels to be pun-

1480] DA VINCI, MACHIAVELLI,

ished pitilessly for one offense, while men can wash all their sins
away with a single tear, and may yet find mercy even in hell.
Boiardo's Orlando Inamorato, which makes fasts, penances,
and sacraments trifles, compared with honor, courage, courtesy,
and truthfulness, has been little read, except in the version
made by Berni about 1535. The most famous of these epics
is Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, first published in 1516. Canto
xiv. sends the archangel Michael to seek Silence in a mon-
astery ; but she has fled, as have Love, Peace, Piety, and
Humility. Avarice, Pride, Anger, Gluttony, Envy, Idleness,
and Cruelty have chased them away. Fraud, too, is there,
and Discord, who later in the poem sets the friars, at the
yearly election of officers, to throwing prayer-books at one
another's heads. The temporal power of the popes is repre-
sented as a heap of flowers, once sweet but now noisome.
And these poems, dramas, and tales were most serviceable to
mental progress by stimulating the imagination to such activ-
ity, especially in regard to man's earthly life, as had been
unknown since the fall of Paganism.

ii.

The most original thinker of the fifteenth century, and one
of the boldest investigators in any age, was Leonardo da
Vinci, whose high fame is slight compared with what lay
within his reach. The only work of his that has been pub-
lished, the Treatise on Painting, is too technical to interest
ordinary readers ; his Last Supper and Battle of the Standard
were painted in colors which soon faded away ; his colossal
equestrian statue was never any thing but a model, of which not
even a trustworthy drawing has come down to us ; his stupen-
dous plans in architecture and engineering found no patron to
execute them ; few of the machines he designed were ever
constructed ; none of his scientific discoveries was announced
by himself ; no full account of them has ever been pub-
lished or ever will be ; and no competent judge ever made
a thorough examination of his writings, which, like his draw-
ings, have been but imperfectly preserved. " But serious

28-4 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1480

students assure us that be was one of the very greatest and
most clear-sighted, as well as one of the earliest of natural
philosophers. They declare him to have been the founder
of the study of the anatomy and structural classification of
plants ; the founder, or at least the chief reviver, of the
science of hydraulics ; to have anticipated many of the geom-
etrical discoveries of Commandin, Autolycus, and Tartaglia ;.
to have divined, or gone far toward divining, the laws of
gravitation, the earth's rotation, and the molecular composi-
tion of water, the motion of waves, and even the undulatory
theory of light and heat. He discovered the construction
of the eye and the optical laws of vision, and invented the
camera obscura. Among useful appliances he invented the
saw which is still in use in the marble quarries of Carrara,
and a rope-making machine, said to be better than any even
yet in use. He investigated the composition of explosives
and the application of steam power ; he perceived that boats
could be made to go by steam, and designed both steam-
cannon and cannon to be loaded at the breech." (Encyclo-
pedia, Britannica, Ninth Edition, vol. xiv., pp. 461-2.)
Among his other drawings are plans for canals, military
bridges, flying machines, clock-work, and the parachute, of
which he was undoubtedly the inventor. Probably he did
not reach the telescope or the pendulum, but he took im-
portant steps toward them. He knew how to make hygrome-
ters, vessels proof against cannon-shot, diving-suits, and
machines for wire-drawing, file-cutting, plate-rolling, and silk-
weaving. He found out the correspondence of the circles
in wood, not only to the age of the trees, but to the relative
moisture and dryness of successive years, the law of arrange-
ment of the leaves, and the fact of their respiration. Lyell
mentions that he was " one of the first who applied sound
reasoning to the question of the origin of fossils," which was
not settled before the close of the last century. The great
recent discovery, that heat is a mode of motion, he so far
anticipated as to speak of " force as a cause of fire." He
found out the impossibility of perpetual motion, studied the
laws of acoustics, combustion, and friction with great care,

1500] DA VINCI, MACHIAVELLI, AND POMPONATIUS. 285

and reached not only special results, but general principles
of the utmost value. " Force," he says, " is a power, spir-
itual, incorporeal, and impalpable, which occurs for a short
period in bodies which, from accidental violence, are out of
their natural repose. I call it spiritual, because there is in
it an invisible life, and incorporeal, because the body in
which it originates increases neither in form nor in weight."
(Mrs. Heaton, Leonardo da Vinci, p. 146.) "Mechanics is
the paradise of the mathematical sciences, because therein
one attains their fruit." " Experience never deceives." " Do
not trust authors who wish to interpret between nature and
men through their own imaginations, but trust only those
who have exercised their understanding upon the results
of their own experiments." (Mrs. Heaton, Leonardo da
Vinci, p. 121.) "Vainly have they labored who have
followed any one but Nature, the Mistress of Masters."
"Many will think themselves warranted in blaming me,
alleging that my proofs are contrary to the author-
ity of certain men whom they hold in high reverence,
* * * not considering that my facts are obtained by simple
pure experiment, which is our real mistress " (Mrs. Heaton,
Leonardo da Vinci, p. 126). These were new and needed
truths in 1500. No wonder that the priests blamed him, as
he tells us, for " working at his art on feast-days, and investi-
gating the works of God." Vasari says he was led by his
study of botany and astronomy "to form such heretical
ideas, that he did not belong to any religion, and thought it
better to be a philosopher than a Christian." His Mss. often
speak of " those Pharisees who heap up great riches and pay
for them in invisible coin ; sell publicly things of value which
were never theirs, and without any license from the owner ;
avoid hard work or poor fare, and live in palaces by exalting
the glory of God." A still plainer proof of his freedom from
theological prejudice is his spending several years, between
1480 and 1484, as engineer in the service of the Sultan of
Egypt. Knowledge of his heterodoxy naturally made him
slow to publish. He says himself of some otherwise un-
known persecution : " When I made the Lord God an infant,

286 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

you imprisoned me ; now if I make Him grown up, you will
treat me worse." One of his Mss. bears the motto, " Fly from
Storms ; " and be gave tbe credit of one of bis own most orig-
inal inventions, tbe steam-cannon, to Arcbimedes. It is im-
possible to know bow mucb science lost by tbat dread of
persecution wbicb silenced Leonardo da Vinci, and probably
many other investigators whose very names have perished.
Much allowance must also be made in his case for incessant
occupation and premature old age. This latter, with long ill-
ness, led him to submit to the Church, and receive her sacra-
ments nine days before his death, which took place on May 2,
1519. No thinker had freed himself so completely from
superstition and deference to authority since the establishment
of Christianity, and scarcely any one else advanced so far be-
fore the eighteenth century. It is, therefore, pleasant to
know that he was a devoted son to his low-born mother, an
industrious laborer in his profession, a diligent and generous
teacher, a genial and faithful friend.

Science can show no other name so illustrious among the
predecessors of Copernicus. That the earth moves in her
orbit was actually suggested by the Cardinal de Cusa, also
noted for urging the Council of Basel to reform the calen-
dar. In 1494 appeared the first printed book on algebra and
geometry, that by Lucas de Burgo, who goes as far as quad-
ratic equations. Ptolemy's geography had been reprinted, with
copper-plate maps, sixteen years earlier, and an encyclopaBdia
called the Margarita Philosophica, was published in 1486.
The description of Asia, written by Pope Pius II., is particu-
larly important for its influence over Columbus, who was
also greatly aided by the intelligent sympathy of Toscanelli.

The most famous, or perhaps infamous, book written in
prose during the period covered by this chapter is the Prince,
by Machiavelli. He had served republican Florence witli a
zeal which caused him to be put on the rack, after Pope
Julius II. restored the Medici. Desire to regain office under
these despots, as he says himself, led him to present to them
in 1516, his manuscript, telling how a city which has once
been free may be most easily and securely kept enslaved.

1500] DA VINCI, MACHIAVELLI, AXD POMPONATIUS. 287'

Nothing could have better served the tyrants, especially as
the book was left to their private study for sixteen years be-
fore its publication. No attention was paid to its only re-
deeming point, the closing plea for a united Italy, defended:
by a national militia, ideas so novel and important as to be
commemorated in the tablet erected by the author's country
on the fourth centenary of his birth, May 3, 1869. It is sig-
nificant that a treatise written to get office mentions Alex-
ander VI. as a ruler who was always practicing fraud, and
warns his Prince not to trust to the alliance with any pope.
The Discourses on the first ten books of Livy, where Machia-
velli ventures to express his real opinion of the infamy of
enslaving a free city, plainly declare the convictions of the
keenest and shrewdest observer of the age :

" The nearer people are to the Church of Rome, which is
the head of our religion, the less religious are they." " The
evil example of the Court of Rome has destroyed all piety
and religion in Italy." " We Italians then, owe to the
Church of Rome, and to her priests, our having become irre-
ligious and bad ; but we owe her a still greater debt, and
one that will be the cause of our ruin, namely, that the
Church has kept and still keeps our country divided "
(Discourses, Book i., chapter xii., Detmold, Writings of
Machiavellij vol. ii., p. 130).

The year of the presentation of the Mss. of the Prince
by Machiavelli to the Medici, and of the first publication of
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, 1516, was also that of the printing
of one of the boldest books thus far written in Christendom,
the De Immortalitate Animce, by Pomponatius. This physi-
cian and professor of philosophy at Bologna and Padua was
born September 16, 1462, and died May 18, 1525,
with " an unsullied reputation for virtuous conduct
and sweetness of temper" (Symonds, Renaissance, vol.
v., p. 461, Am. Ed.). He was thrice married, but not
even on these occasions did he discontinue for more than
a few hours the study of Aristotle, concerning which he
says : " This drives me and straightens me : this makes
me sleepless and insane." His diminutive size caused him

288 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

to be nicknamed Peretto, and called a pigmy warring against
heaven, by bigoted monks against whom he was protected
by friendly cardinals. One of these latter gave him an honor-
able burial in Mantua, where his tomb may still be visited.

His little treatise on Immortality, after attacking the Aver-
roist view, that the only part of us which survives death has no
individuality, makes a thorough examination of the belief then
and now orthodox, namely, that each soul is one indissoluble
and immortal personality. Poraponatius protests that he has
no doubt of this, since it is plainly taught, not only by the
Bible, which is above all human reason, but by the incontro-
vertible Thomas Aquinas, and that lie is only acting as a
questioner, seeking to bring truth into full light, when he states
such objections as the following : "If the soul's independence
of the senses in some respects proves her immortality, so does
her dependence in others disprove it. And there are more of
her faculties which imply mortality than immortality, as may
be seen in the low mental condition of savages, as well as of
women generally. Nor can we prove that the soul is able to
think without the body, a capacity expressly denied by Aris-
totle, or understand her connection with the body except by
assuming her materiality. Finally, since each soul is admitted
to have a beginning, she can not be a partaker of eternity,
wherein is neither beginning nor end, but must be finite in
her end as well as in her beginning." After giving these and
similar objections at some length, in chapter viii., Pompona-
tius sets forth his own view, that "the soul may be called
immortal in so far as she is a form of pure thought, which
latter is independent of sensation, and therefore both imma-
terial and eternal, but that she is mortal in reality, since she
is affected by the mortality of the body, which is necessarily
with her, not as the subject, but yet as the object, of her acts."
A series of objections to this view are proposed in chapter
xiii., and answered in chapter xiv., as follows:

" 1. If man is mortal, he has no adequate object for exer-
tion and no superiority over the lower animals.

" 2. If this earthly life were thought our only one, we should
not be willing to sacrifice it for any duty.

1500] DA VINCI, MACHIAVELLI, AND POMPONATIUS. 289

"3. If there is no reward for goodness or punishment for
sin but what is seen here on earth, then there is no govern-
ment, or at least no just one, by God.

" 4. All religions have taught immortality.

" 5. There are many accounts of apparitions, as well as of
visions, like that at the close of Plato's Republic, and of
heavenly dreams, some of which latter had happened to Pom-
ponatius himself.

" 6. There is also testimony in favor of demoniacal posses-
sion.

" 7. Some passages of Aristotle imply belief in immortality.

"8. All who denied it have been wicked and godless men;
<f or instance, Aristippus and Sardanapalus."

But—

" I. As all the members of the body are necessary for
its life, so are all those of the human race, living for which
is the individual's destined end and aim; and as for superiority
•over the brutes, that is secured by our intelligence, one spark
of which is worth more than all bodily pleasures.

" II. Nothing is more precious and advantageous in itself
than virtue, and nothing more ruinous than vice ; so that
goodness is always to be chosen for its own sake, and wicked-
ness to be shunned.

" III. Virtue is its own true reward, and does more than all
things else to make us happy, while vice is its own worst pun-
ishment.

" IV. Of the three religions founded by Jesus, Moses, and
Mahomet, two at least are false, and perhaps all of them, while
the wisest legislators, as is shown by Plato and Aristotle, have
not cared for truth, but only for virtue, in teaching future
rewards and punishments, and have acted like physicians who
deceive the patient for his good. '

"V. Some of the stories of ghosts are mere fables, others
illusions, and others fabrications by priests, many of whom
turn the four cardinal virtues into ambition, avarice, gluttony,
and lust. Apparitions, not to be accounted for thus, may be
those of angels or demons who never were human. Visions
and dreams prove only that God is watching over us.

290 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

" VI. What is called demoniacal possession may be only
disease.

" VII. Aristotle may be explained otherwise.

" VIII. Many great sinners are known to have believed in
immortality, and among those who rejected it have been
many good and wise men, like Homer, Simonides, Hippo-
crates, Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Pliny, and Seneca."

" It is commonly said," adds Pomponatius, " that if the
soul is mortal, a man ought to give himself up to bodily pleas-
ure, and do any wickedness he may think expedient, while
worship of God would be wholly useless ; but it is enough to
answer that, since it is our nature to seek happiness and shun
misery, and since happiness consists in virtue and misery in
vice, it follows not only that we should worship God, which
is virtuous, but that we ought to abstain from murder, rob-
bery, theft, and other vices which turn men to beasts. Re-
member that he who works earnestly, and seeks no reward but
virtue herself is much more virtuous and noble than he who
looks for some reward besides ; and so he who flees from vice
on account of its baseness only is much more worthy of praise
than he who avoids it merely through fear of punishment.
Thus those who make the soul mortal are seen to preserve the
honor of virtue better than do they who call themselves im-
mortal, for hope of reward and fear of punishment bring in
something selfish."

In the concluding chapter, Pomponatius says, that
though these arguments from reason do not decisively estab-
lish either the mortality of the soul or her immortality, yet he
himself believes in the latter as taught in the Bible, the creeds,
the Fathers, and the Doctors, especially Thomas Aquinas, and
submits himself completely to papal authority. Thus he
closes : " On September 24, 1516, the fourth year of the pon-
tificate of Leo X. to the praise of the Holy Trinity."

This pious conclusion did not save the book from being
publicly burned at Venice, but the favor of Cardinal Bembo
prevented the persecution of the author, who was obliged to
publish, two years later, an Apology, in which he says that
Christianity is the only religion which can consistently teach

1500] DA VINCI, MACHIA VELLI, AND POMPONATIUS. 291

immortality, because this creed alone asserts the resurrection
of the body.

Much of the power of the De Immortalitate lies in the sug-
gestion that Aristotle, who was considered almost as infallible
as the Church herself, really differed from her so much, that
one or the other must be given up. That this dilemma also-
exists about the miracles is shown in his De Naturalium Ef-
fectuum Causis or De Incantationibus, first published in 1556.
Here he is not so argumentative or metaphysical as in the
work just described, but gives much space to stories of bibli-
cal, classical, and medieval prodigies, especially those said to
be wrought by evil spirits. Pomponatius speaks with great
respect of the order of nature, and plainly declares that many
alleged violations of it are really due to the power of the im-
agination and other natural causes. Such explanations can not,
he thinks, be given of the multiplication of the loaves, the
raising of Lazarus, the darkening of the sun at the crucifixion,
etc. Here he comes to the dilemma, one side of which he
states thus : " The principle laid down by Aristotle is false,
that God can not act except according to the universal order
of nature. We know that Aristotle and Plato were ignorant
and sinful mortals ; wherefore it is foolish to put faith in all
they say, especially in what they say contrary to Christianity."
(Chapter xiii., p. 320 and 321, Ed. of 1567). He has to leave
it to the reader to see the other alternative, which Pompona-
tius evidently thinks peculiarly probable in regard to demo-
niacal agency. Perhaps the boldest passages are these :
" Every thing is now growing cold in our faith, and miracles
cease, except fictitious ones, for the end is near." (Chapter
xii., p. 286, Ed. of 1567). " All knowledge is the perfection
of the intellect, and good in itself, useful, and honorable."
(Chapter iv., p. 64, Ed. of 1567).

These last words show what there was 'in Pomponatius, as
well as da Vinci, Bacon, and Abelard, which was most dan-
gerous to the Church. She held knowledge good or bad, ac-
cording as it helped or hindered her work. This had been her
view from the beginning, and there is not a word, even in the
New Testament, to show that intellectual culture is a duty, or

292 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

that knowledge is valuable for its own sake, or that truth is
to be reached by any natural process of thought. These ideas
had not yet been recognized by Christianity, but they were
common-places in classic literature. Hence the revival of let-
ters necessarily and immediately brought about habits of
thought incompatible with the authority of the Church, and
indeed of Christianity itself, as then understood. The earlier
manifestations of this spirit had been repressed by persecu-
tion, but love of truth had now become irrepressible.

Especially favorable to the power of literature was the in-
vention of printing, whose origin was north of the Alps, but
whose first early success was in Italy, two thousand eight
hundred and thirty-five books having been published at
Venice between 1470 and 1500, nine hundred and twenty-five
at Rome, and six hundred and twenty-nine at Milan ; while
Paris had seven hundred and fifty-one, Cologne five hundred
and thirty, Strasburg five hundred and twenty-six, no other
place more than four hundred, and London had only one hund-
red and thirty. Printing-presses had been set up in seventy
cities of Italy before the end of the century, and had pub-
lished five thousand works, among which were two editions
of Lucretius, the first being placed about 1473. Lucian ap-
peared at Florence in 1496, and in 1503 at Venice, where the
Aldine press had now become famous. Wood-cuts, which are
believed to have been made in 1406, and copper-plate en-
graving, which seems to have been in use as early as 1440,
assisted in preserving and diffusing every result of thought,
though their chief value was as servants of beauty, rather
than of truth.

in.

Strongly helpful to liberal views was the artistic culture,
which developed rapidly in Italy during the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and culminated early in the sixteenth,
when Raphael, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Correg-
gio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Benvenuto Cellini, Bramante,
and many other painters, sculptors, and architects, produced

1500] SECULAR INFL UESCES IN ITAL T. 293

works which I can not criticise. I venture only to suggest
how they favored mental progress.

In the first place, great attention was early paid to pagan
subjects. Raphael's School of Athens, Galatea, and Psyche,
Michael Angelo's Bacchus, Cupid, and Brutus, Leonardo da
Vinci's Leda and Medusa, Correggio's lo, Danae, and Diana,
Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, Perugino's Leonidas and Cato,
Signorelli's Pan, Mantegna's Triumph of Caesar, and many
similar but less famous works, were admirably adapted to
show how much pleasure, beauty, and truth there is outside
of Christianity. So were the newly discovered ancient mas-
terpieces, like the Laocoon, the Belvidere Apollo, and the
Vatican Venus.

" Art proved itself a powerful coagent in the emancipation
of the intellect ; the impartiality wherewith its methods were
applied to subjects sacred and profane, the emphasis laid
upon physical strength and beauty, as good things and de-
sirable, the subordination of classical and medieval myths to
one aesthetic law of loveliness, all tended to withdraw atten-
tion from the differences between paganism and Christianity,
and to fix it on the "goodliness of that humanity wherein both
find their harmony." (Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, vol-
ume iii. The Fine Arts, p. 8, Am. Ed.).

Moreover, these ancient statues were none the less honored
because they were nude, as for instance were the Graces
which a cardinal set up in his family chapel, and the Venuses
which popes valued more than any crucifix. Naked figures
were introduced by Signorelli before the end of the fifteenth
century, into a painting of the Madonna, as they were later
by Michael Angelo, into his Last Judgment, while the houses
of wealthy Florentines were profusely ornamented with nudi-
ties destitute of religious meaning. Here was a wide depart-
ure, not only from ecclesiastical ideas of purity, but from
that disparagement of the body hitherto characteristic of
Christianity. Paul was then thought the author of " Bodily
exercise profiteth little," as well as of " In my flesh dwelleth
no good thing," " Our vile body," etc. The dislike of gym-
nastics, expressed in Maccabees , i., 14 and 15, had never been

294 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AXD ART. [1300

recalled canonically. Bathing, much insisted on by ancient
Jews, Greeks, and Romans, almost went out of use until
after the crusades. Monks, nuns, and hermits who never
washed, or even looked at their bodies, were thought pecul-
iarly holy. Thus the Church was committed to views of the
body which Art showed to be puerile.

Then again even the professedly religious pictures often
were only portraits of voluptuously beautiful women, notori-
ous for profligacy. Raphael is not the only artist whose mis-
tresses became Madonnas, and Leonardo da Vinci painted a
Virgin from one of the Grand Duke's favorites, whose name
was appended to the masterpiece. Such pictures did much to
make intelligent church-goers irreligious.

No one understood the spiritual condition of the fifteenth
century better than Savonarola, and he had many of its artis-
tic productions burned publicly. A century later we find deep
conviction of the irreligious tendency of Italian pictures ex-
pressed by Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. (Clement,
Michael Angela, Leonardo da Vinci, and Raphael, p. 135.)
The Puritans felt in the same way ; and these people certainly
knew more than any one can at present about the effect on
themselves and their associates of the paintings and statues
around them.

And, finally, that Art, while professing to serve the
Church, should only make use of her to her ruin, was inevitable
from the fact that their aims are irreconcilable. Art
delights to honor physical beauty, and glorify this earthly
life. The Church seeks to raise thought and feeling
above worldly objects. She has said from the beginning,
" Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity." " Love not
the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any
man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust
of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is
of the world." " Set your affection on things above, not on
things which are on the earth." " Look not at the things which
are seen, but at the things which are not seen." Art, on the
other hand, speaks directly to the lust of the eyes, and says,

1500] SECULAR IX FL UENCE8 IN ITAL Y. 295

" Rejoice in the beauty you see around you. Be satisfied with
what I show you here on earth." There is nothing in the New
Testament to favor artistic culture, or love of natural beauty.
Jesus speaks of the lilies of the field, but only to blame
thought about attire. Paul would have us think of " What-
soever things are lovely," but both context and classic usage
show that he really refers to what is amiable. Biblical
and medieval Christianity thought nothing lovely but piety
and morality, looked at earth only as a step in the way to
heaven, and scorned the body in order to save the soul. Thus the
progress of art implied the decline of Christianity, as then
understood. The change was for the moment unfavorable to
purity, which, however, had not been very successfully culti-
vated by the Church. Morality could not thrive until the
laws of Self-culture were brought into harmony with those of
Purity, Justice, and Love.

And not only the artistic and literary, but the commercial
activity of the fifteenth century involved disbelief in Chris-
tianity. " Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of
God." " But woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received
your consolation." " Take therefore no thought for the
morrow." " If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou
hast, and give to the poor." u Lay not up for yourselves
treasures upon earth." " It is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God." Thus spake Jesus, and his words had been
taken literally by ancient and medieval Christianity. The
whole monastic system, and especially the great Franciscan
order, was simply an attempt to follow the Gospel teaching of
the superior holiness of poverty, and the peculiarly dangerous
temptations involved in the possession of wealth. The early
satirists had seldom done more than ridicule the monks
and priests for striving to make money, blaming every one
who did so. Piers Plowman's Vision is one of the first
declarations of the intrinsic holiness of honest industry. It
was long before the rights of merchants, bankers, and manu-
facturers were fully recognized by either literature, theology,
•or legislation. Usury, which then meant merely lending on

296 THH REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

interest, was considered sinful and criminal for centuries after
the first advocate of its innocence was burned as a heretic in
1388. This necessary branch of business was quietly carried
on, however, by the bank of Venice, established in 1171; by
those of Barcelona and Genoa, whose dates are 1401 and 1407,
and also by many individual Lombards and Florentines. The
most powerful men of Florence, as well as of other cities in
upper Italy, France, Germany, Flanders, and England, were
bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, who treated the
Church with sincere respect, as well as lavish generosity, but
yet gave unconsciously an irresistible demonstration of the
extravagance of some of her plainest precepts.

Commerce, art, and literature helped make the spirit of
the age secular, and so did oceanic discovery. Nothing did
more to show how worthy of study this earth is, and how
little was known of it by the saints and sages of the past, than
the discovery of America by Columbus, Friday, October 12,
1492. . Diaz had reached the Cape of Good Hope in 1486 ;
Vasco di Gama went on as far as India in 1498; the Cabots
discovered North America in 1497; Balboa saw the Pacific in
1510; Cortez conquered Mexico in 1519, and Magellan set sail
that very year to circumnavigate the globe. Spain and Por-
tugal, which fitted out most of these expeditions, made larger
gains commercially than intellectually, but the quickening
influence was felt all over Europe.

Scholars, authors, printers, painters, sculptors, merchants,
bankers, and navigators, all did something to make the ruling
spirit at the beginning of the sixteenth century secular, but
no one did so much as the popes. Papal history for more
than two hundred years had been an almost unbroken series
of scandals. The trials of Boniface and the Templars, the
debaucheries at Avignon, the contests of the perjured usurpers
who reigned there and at Rome in a rivalry not to be ended
except by that great council which exposed the iniquity of
John XXIII., and the steady resistance of his successors during
the next fifty years to even moderate reform, had been fol-
lowed by the reign, between 1464 and 1513, of five notoriously
licentious, bloodthirsty, and perfidious tyrants. The first of

15CO] SECULAR INFL UENCE8 IN ITAL Y. 297

them, Paul II., the persecutor of the philosophers, had openly
violated the pledges with which he mounted the throne, and
made no secret of his sensuality. Nor did Sixtus IV., who
sold his offices openly, starved his subjects by a monopoly of
wheat, had murder committed during public worship in Flor-
ence, sanctioned the entrance of the inquisition into Spain, as
well as the expulsion of the Jews, put the archbishop of
Carniola into the prison where he perished, for trying to call a
second council of Basel, and died himself of rage at seeing
peace return to Italy. Then came Innocent VIII., who openly
violated his oath to rule constitutionally, publicly acknowl-
edged his bastards, and loaded them with the wealth he gained
by selling pardons for every sin. All previous scandals were
surpassed when Alexander VI. turned the Vatican into a
harem, looked with delight at gladiatorial combats among his
own guards, stirred up unjust wars to aggrandize his atrocious
son, betrayed his allies with an effrontery hitherto unknown,
sold cardinals' hats openly, and poisoned brother clergymen
for their wealth, until, as there is good reason to believe, he
drank by mistake his own venom. Then, passing over the
few days of Pius III., we have that drunken, sensual, and am-
bitious lover of war, Julius II., who would not have a book
placed in the hand of his statue, but a sword, and who led in
armor his soldiers to the sack of Mirandola. It was a great
relief when these monsters were succeeded, in 1513, by Leo
X.; but he really finished their work, by an utter indifference
to religion, which made him sanction the publication of the
books of Pomponatius and Erasmus, delight in licentious
comedies which brought the worst of charges against the
Church, give his main attention to theatricals, feasts, hunt-
ing, fishing, and the purchase of naked statues and pagan
manuscripts (objects for which he freely spent the profits of
the sale of indulgences,) favor a cardinal who advised a
bishop not to read Paul's epistles lest their barbarisms should
hurt his style, permit preachers to speak of God as Jupiter
Optimus Maximus, of the Virgin as a Goddess, as well as of
the popes and saints as Gods, and finally suffer himself by
mere negligence to die without the sacraments. No one was

298 TILE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

thought a man of culture who did not scoff at the doctrines
of the Church. Priests at the altar delighted in burlesquing
the formula of consecration at the communion, and saying,
" Bread thou art ; bread thou shalt remain ! " Even the
names of the people were becoming pagan, as is shown by
the frequent occurrence of Csesar, Hector, Achilles, Lucretia,
Portia, and Hippolyta. We have seen that Machiavelli be-
lieved Catholicism to have been destroyed in Italy. Thus the
sixteenth century opened more propitiously for the growth of
free thought than any of its predecessors for more than
twelve hundred years. No wonder that Leo and his succes-
sors were unable to suppress the Reformation. But why did
Germany, and not Italy, take the lead in this movement, and
why was it most active in countries north of the Alps ? This
is the question to be answered in the remainder of the
chapter.

IV.

The problem, at first, seems all the darker because
medieval habits of thought lingered nearly a century longer
in Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands, than in
Italy, whither northern scholars came to study Greek and
Latin at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Poggio could find no good books in England in 1420, not
even in the monasteries, where there were many men given to
sensuality, but very few lovers of learning, and those caring
for little but quibbles and sophisms. Chaucer found no
worthy successor, and all culture languished during the Wars
of the Roses, which lasted until 1485. The first English
book, the Game of Chess, was printed by Caxton, in 1474,
and this century reared Eton, King's, Queen's, and St. John's
Colleges at Cambridge, and Lincoln, All Souls', and Magda-
len at Oxford. The Cabots had begun their discoveries before
1500. Not until late in the sixteenth century did the English
ivn.iissance reach its height. Among its best friends in the
fifteenth were the merchants who had commercial treaties made
with Spain, Flanders, the Hanse towns, Brittany, Florence,

THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE. 299

and other cities of Italy, with all which places, as well as with
Scotland and Ireland, trade was brisk.

Rather before 1450, Bishop Pecock, whose name accords
well with his vanity, fell unawares into heresy in his attempt
to take more reasonable ground than the Lollards. Their ob-
jections to all ceremonies not commanded by the Bible, he mot
substantially as follows : " It does not belong to Holy Scrip-
ture to be the foundation for any practice or belief which the
reason of man is able to find out naturally." (depressor of
overmuch blaming the Clergy, page 10). " All knowledge of
God's moral law may be had from reason ; and all the virtues
may thus be known sufficiently." (Repressor, pp. 12 and 13).
" Where doth Holy Scripture give a hundredth part as
much about matrimony as my book, all whose teaching is
little enough?" (Repressor, p. 15.) "Before any positive
law was given by Abraham or Moses, people were bound to
all the moral truths which had been learned from natural
reason." (Represser, p. 18). "The moral law still abiding
among Christians is not founded in Holy Scripture, but
in that book which was written in men's souls by the finger
of God, before the days of Moses and Jesus." (Represser,
p. 20).

" And if there be any seeming discord between the words
written in the outward book of Holy Scripture and the judg-
ment of reason, written in man's soul and heart, the word so
written outwardly ought to be expounded and interpreted and
made to accord with the judgment of reason in the matter,
and this judgment should not be made to agree with the out-
ward writing in the Bible or any where else." (Represser,
p. 25-6).

" If any man be afeard, lest he trespass against God, if he
think over little of the outward authority of the Old Testa-
ment and of the New, I ask why he is not afeard, lest he make
over little of the inward scripture of the law of nature, writ-
ten by God himself in man's soul, when he made it in his
own image." (Represser, p. 51-2). "Let Holy Scripture
abide within its own limits, and not enter the rights of the
law of nature, or usurp that fundamental authority which

300 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AXD ART.

belongs to moral philosophy." (Represser, p. 70). " Holy
Scripture, as the law of faith, is not so worthy in itself, nor
so necessary and profitable unto man, as is the moral law
decreed by reason." (Repressor, p. 84).

Such advanced ground had not yet been taken by any
Christian teacher, except Raymond of Sabunde, or Sabieude,
a medical professor at Toulouse, who said, about 1435, of the-
Book of Nature, " This is the source and fountain of all
truth, so that he who has it needs no other." " It does not rest
on the authority of the Scriptures, but confirms them." " It
cannot be falsified or wrongly interpreted, neither can it make
any one heretical, but the second book, namely, the Bible,
may be falsified and misunderstood. Yet they both have the
same author and agree among themselves." (Owen, Evenings
with the Skeptics, vol. ii).

Raymond's Liber Creaturarum attracted little notice before-
the middle of the next century, and does not seem to have
been known to Pecock, who soared higher than any one else
had done for twelve hundred years, when he said, in answer
to the Lollard doctrine, that whatever is clearly taught in the
Bible should be admitted without discussion :

" This is like the law of Mohammed, where it is most un-
reasonable." (Represser, p. 99). " No truth can be known
without argument." (Represser, p. 97). "A conclusion of
belief is not worthy of being held true, if it can not be sus-
tained by proper evidence, and if sufficient answer can not be
given to all objections which may be made against it. God
forbid that any man should think any doctrine ought to be held
true, when it could be proved false by any argument." (Re-
presser, p. 98.) " The more any truth, whether of faith or notr
be brought under examination by discussion, the more true
and the more clearly true it shall be seen to be." (Represser^
p. 99.)

Pecock makes an exception of doctrines plainly revealed,,
for instance, the incarnation, but there is no other reservation in
favor of church authority, which in fact had never yet been
set aside so boldly in the name of free discussion. And the
book we are considering actually dares to present, as ground

THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE. 301

for rejecting the legend, quoted by Langland, and very dear to
the Lollards, that when Constantino gave political power to
the pope, an angel was heard crying aloud, " This day is
poison poured into the Church," an elaborate series of argu-
ments proving that this emperor made no such gift. (Repres-
sor, pp. 350-GO.) This was directly against all ecclesiastical
authority, especially that of the False Decretals, exposure of
which but a few years before had nearly sent Laurentius Valla
to the stake. The bishop's wish to argue only from sound
premises also led him to admit, as this Italian scholar had done,
that the Apostles did not write the Creed which still bears
their name. This view is set forth in the JBooJc of Faith,
which was published like the Represser, about 1456, and which
denied the infallibility of councils. For these and other here-
sies the aged bishop was expelled from the House of Lords
shortly before November 11, 1457, when he recanted, because
the archbishop of Canterbury threatened him with the stake.
On Sunday, December 4, he appeared in full pontificals at
Paul's Cross, and read his abjuration, while his books were
turned. The rest of his life he spent in a convent-dungeon,
where he could see no visitors or have pen, ink, or paper.
Nearly three centuries elapsed before any pains were taken to
show how far he had advanced, the Represser was not printed
before 1860, and the greater part of the Book of Faith is
still like his other works extant only in manuscript. Few men
have been so plainly in advance of their age, and seldom has
the Church shown herself so decidedly hostile to liberty of
thought. We may regret his cowardice, but we must thank
England for being the first, not only to establish biblical
authority, but to show how it could be struck down when it
had served its end.

France suffered greatly during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries from civil and foreign wars, amid which we find the
earliest of professional authoresses, Christine de Pisan, pleading
for peace with an earnestness which does not hinder her delight
in the achievements of Joan of Arc. Early in this century we
hearBaunet lamenting the slaughter of brother by brother on
account of differences of faith, blaming the pride, lust and

302 TUB REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

avarice of Rome for all the strife, and prophesying that the
nations who see her sins will soon break her yoke. Strong
opposition to the temporal power of the pope is expressed by
the authors of the Good Shepherd and the Orchard Vision, the
former of which poems insists that kings ought to live for their
people, while the latter says : " No unbeliever should be
forced by war or in any other way to come to the Catholic
faith ; and we ought not to fight against those infidels who
wish to be at peace with us, but only against those who attack
us." A little later, about 1450, that peculiarly powerful prop-
agandist, the theater, complained, in the pastoral comedy,
Better than Before, Mieulx que Devant, of the weight of the
taxes, as well as the outrages committed by the recently dis-
banded soldiers, against whom the people are exhorted to take
up arms. In 1496, the farce of the Miller, Le Munyer, brought
before French audiences that character familiar to the readers
of Boccaccio, the adulterous parish-priest. These two dramas
are still extant ; but no one knows how many similar ones of
this period have passed away after doing their part in eman-
cipating France. In the same cause labored many of the
popular preachers, for instance Maillard, who when that gloomy
tyrant, Louis XL, threatened to throw him into the Seine,,
answered : " Tell his Majesty that I can go to Heaven more
rapidly by water than he can with his post-horses."

Neither of these two countries produced any artists of im-
portance during the period covered by this chapter ; and only
at its close can Germany show Albert Durer and Peter
Vischer, while the invention of oil-painting by the Van
Eycks, 1410-20, proved rather unproductive in Flanders ;
though this country was then advancing toward the height of
prosperity, which she reached before 1470.

Printing with movable types is said to have been invented
by Koster at Haarlem before 1430, but this whole story is
very improbable, and it is certain that not a single book of
importance was published there before 1483. The credit of
setting this great servant of thought successfully to work
belongs to Gutenberg, who, in all probability, discovered it
independently. The only doubt is whether the presses he

1500] THE NORTHERN RENAISSANCE. 303

had set up in Strasburg as early as 1436 were used in print-
ing or only in his ostensible business of making looking-
glasses, that is whether the first use of movable metal types
was not at Mainz, where he and Faust issued in 1454 the
earliest printed work extant, which bears a date, a sheet of
papal Letters of Indulgence, and where they were then working
on a large and superbly executed Bible, which appeared about
1455, and was certainly the first printed book of any size. The
stories of persecution of these early printers by the monks do
not appear to be founded on fact. Before the end of the cen-
tury presses had been set up without any opposition of import-
ance in Strasburg, Mainz, Cologne, Munich, Bamberg, Vienna,,
Basel, Lubeck, Ghent, Brussels, Bruges, Haarlem, Cracow,
Stockholm, Copenhagen, Paris, Lyons, Troyes, Rouen, Oxford,
London, seventy cities of Italy, and many other places. A
dozen editions of the Bible in German appeared before 1500,
with other versions in modern languages.

No original book seems to have appeared in Germany be-
fore Sebastian Brandt's Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools, printed
in Basel in 1494, and mainly important for the boldness with
which it was used by Geiler of Kaiserberg, a popular preacher
who said : " I shall be dead when the reformers come ; but
many of you will live to see the building crumble." An ex-
tremely anti-clerical Reynard the Fox, in Low German,
appeared in 1498. I know of nothing by Felix Hemmerlein,
a classical scholar, who died about 1464, in prison for censur-
ing the clergy. And the writings of the learned Gregory
Heimburg, who was excommunicated and exiled in 1461 for
maintaining that it was heresy in the pope to place himself
above a general council, and that Jesus had given only spirit-
ual, but not temporal, power to the Apostles and their succes-
sors, were not printed before 1595. The opening of the uni-
versity of Heidelberg, in 1386, was followed during the next
hundred years by those of Cologne, Erfurt, Wurzburg, Leip-
sic, Rostock, Greifswald, Freiburg, Treves, Tubingen and
Mainz, besides Louvain and Upsala, all at first claimed by
scholasticism, but destined ere long to be focuses of the new
culture, in whose interest better schools than had been hith-

304 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1500

erto in use, especially for girls, were now opened in many
cities.

Nothing north of the Alps did more to break up medieval
habits of thought than the terrible defeats which Germany
and French chivalry suffered during the fourteenth and fif-
teenth centuries from Flemish artisans and Swiss, English,
Bohemian, and Saxon peasants. The defeats of King Philip
the Fair at Courtrai, 1302 ; of the dukes of Austria at Mor-
garten and Sempach, 1315 and 1396 ; of the nobility of France
at Crecy and Agincourt, 1346 and 1415 ; of five hosts of Ger-
man crusaders in Bohemia, between 1420 and 1426, and of
Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy, at Granson, Morat, and
Nancy, 1476 and '77, were followed by that of King John of
Denmark, on February 17, 1500, in the Pass of H mming-
stadt. Here the Ditmarsh peasants, who have had too little
notice from historians, gained such a signal victory over an
army twice their numbers, and composed mainly of German
knights, that they were left to live free under magistrates of
their own choice until 1559, as they had done from time im-
memorial. Less fortunate was Hans Boheim, a young peas-
ant prophet, under Hussite or Mystic teachers, who collected
20,000 armed followers near Wiirzburg, in 1476, in order to
put down popes and emperors, taxes and inequalities of prop-
erty, so that all men might live like brothers, but who was
promptly burned alive by the bishop. Perhaps his plans have
been as much misrepresented as are Jack Cade's in Henry VI.
The English rebel, who was really a physician named John
Aylmer, tried in 1450 to reform fifteen grievances, as follows :
Kent was to be turned into a forest. The king lived on the
commons. Provisions taken for the royal household were not
paid for. Justice was denied the poor. Prisoners were con-
fined without trial. Poor men's lands were taken illegally.
Traitors of high rank went unpunished. Taxes were collected
in ways needlessly burdensome. Sheriffs and bailiffs extorted
fees unsanctioned by law, a charge made three times in various
forms. Arrests were made without legal warrant. Elections
for Parliament were interfered with by men of rank. Mem-
bers of Parliament took bribes. The courts of justice were

1511] SATIRISTS. 305

held in places difficult of access. These were Cade's de-
mands, according to Holinshed, who says that the citizens of
London took his side until they found that his men would not
obey his command to abstain from pillage. The closer we
look at the popular insurrections in England, France, and
Germany, the more reason we shall find to regret that they
did not succeed like those in Switzerland. But all these move-
ments did something to make bishop*-, nobles, kings, and popes
see that they could not hope to hold their power much longer
without the popular consent.

v.

With the sixteenth century began an unprecedented
literary activity in France, Germany, Switzerland, England,
and the Netherlands. The reign of Louis XII. from 1498 to
1515, was singularly favorable to authorship, on account not
only of his personal tolerance, which permitted the actor of
the monologue, still known as the Passing Pilgrim, Le Pelerin
Passant, to ridicule the royal avarice and other faults in high
places, but also of his political hostility to Pope Julius II.
whom he tried to depose at the council of Pisa in 1511, when
he struck medals saying, " I will destroy the very name of
Rome," " Perdam Babylonis nomen." To this period belongs
the farce in which Poverty complains that Nobility and
Clergy make her wash their dirty linen, stained with all the
vices, but will pay her nothing, as well as that in which when
the Old World goes to sleep, and a party of fools, led by the
Church, try to build a new one, Chivalry proposes that it be
founded on Chastity, but his fellow jesters exclaim, " Chastity
and the Church are not acquainted." The most original and
fertile of early French satirists, Gringoire, wrote in 1510 that
censure of the papal fondness for war, called the Hope of
Peace from the Acts of certain Popes, and also that attack
on the pontiff who called himself " Servus Servorum," la
Chasse der Cerf des Cerfs. During the carnival of 1511
was acted his Jest of the Prince of Fools, Jeu du Prince des
Sotz. This personage, then well known on the stage, and here

306 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART.

typifying the king of France, calls together his nobles, prel-
ates, and burghers to help him resist the Church, whose tem-
poral power is declared incompatible with peace. The bish-
ops acquiesce, especially as they are reminded how many of
them keep mistresses behind their curtains, instead of prayer
books. The commons object to levying war against St.
Peter's throne. A woman who calls herself " Holy Church,"
enters and confesses that she has lost her most useful fool,
'Faith. The bishops join her, and fight with her against the
nobles, who say, " Our Mother has turned soldier ! " The
prince bids his servants find out who this sanctified enemy
really is, and she is seen to be " Mother Folly " in disguise,
" La Mere Sotte." The commons exclaim with delight, " It is
not Mother Church who makes war upon us, but only Mother
Folly ! "

On the death of the bloody Julius, 1513, appeared a satire
which was probably written by Faustus Andrelini of Forli,
whose title of poet laureate had been gained by a long resi-
dence in France, and whose initials, F. A. F., are on the title-
page. Some critics have ascribed it to Erasmus and Hutten,
both of wrhom disclaimed it, and neither of whom took its
strong position in favor of councils. At all events, an
abridged version may here be given with propriety, especially as
it has never been translated into English, though it was pub-
lished in German as early as 1520, and occasionally reprinted
afterwards.

Pope Julius II. (Before the gate of Heaven.) — What is
the trouble ? Don't the gate open ? I think the lock has
been changed, or is out of order.

Attendant Genius. — See if you have the right key ? Why
did you bring only that of your money chest ?

Julius. — I never had any other, and don't see the need of
any.

Genius. — Neither do I, but meantime we are shut out.

Julius. — My blood boils. (Beats the gate). Halloo ! Hal-
loo ! Open the door !

Peter, (within.) — It is well the gate is of adamant, or it
would be broken down. There must be some giant here.

1518] SATIRISTS. 307

What a stench ! (Looks out at a window). Who are you ?
What do you want ?

Julius. — Open the gate ! If you did your duty, you would
come out to meet me with all the heavenly glory.

Peter. — You are domineering enough. Tell me who you
are.

Julius. — As if you could not see for yourself.

Peter. — I see such a sight as was never seen here before.

Julius. — You are blind, or you would know this key, and
the triple crown, and the jeweled robe.

Peter. — I see a silver key, very unlike those given me by the
true Shepherd, Christ. But what a crown ! No one ever
tried to enter here with it. And your cloak is nothing to me,
who trampled on gems and gold. I see the marks of my
namesake, Simon the Sorcerer.

Julius. — You had better stop jesting, I am Julius. You
know what P. M. means ?

Peter. — Pestis Magnus, I suppose.

Genius.— Ha ! ha ! He's hit it.

Julias. — Pontifex Maximus.

Peter. — You may be thrice mightiest, but you can not come
in, unless you are saintly.

Julius. — Then open the door, impudence ! You are only a
saint, but I am most saintly in all my bulls — six thousand of
them.

Peter. — Do you think it makes no difference whether you
are called saintly, or whether you are so? But who are
your companions? There are about 20,000, and not one
looks like a Christian. How they smell of gunpowder !
What a band of robbers ! How fierce you look, yourself,
and how plain it is that you have lived in lust ! I suspect
you are that most noxious heathen, Julius Caesar, returning
from hell.

Julius. — Ma desi .

Peter. — What does he say ?

Genius. — He is angry. When he makes such a noise, all
the cardinals run. They have felt his cudgel, especially when
he was drinking.

308 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1513

Julius. — Will you open the gate, or do you want it broken
down? I will hurl a thunder-bolt of excommunication at
you. I have a bull ready.

Peter. — Bull ? Excommunication ? Never did I hear such
words from Christ !

Julius.— <\ arn still pope, for the cardinals are quarreling
over my successor. Open the door !

Peter. — Not until you tell your merits. Have you excelled
in teaching ?

Julius. — No, I was too busy with war.

Peter. — Has your example led many to Christ ?

Genius. — Very many to hell.

Peter. — Have you distinguished yourself by miracles ?

Julius. — You speak of what is obsolete.

Peter. — Have you prayed without ceasing ?

Julius. — Nonsense !

Peter. — Have you grown lean in fasting and watching?

Genius. — You are wasting your time.

Julius. — I made myself cardinal by my courage, but you
were frightened at the voice of a girl. I never gave up hope
of the papacy, and at last I gained it by the favor of France,
and the power of money. Then I made myself richer than
Crassus by selling benefices and other offices. I conquered
Bologna, Venice, and Ferrara. Finally I drove the French
out of Italy. There is not a king in Christendom whom I
have not stirred up to war, and all the treaties which kept them
in peace I have broken. My triumphs have been most
applauded, and my buildings most magnificent. All this is
not owing to my birth, for I don't know who my father was,
nor to my education, for I never had any, nor to my popu-
larity, for every body hates me.

Peter.— To what then ?

Julius. — To my courage and my money.

Peter. — I never heard any thing like it. — But who are those
companions, so covered with scars ?

Julius. — My soldiers. I promised them in my bulls that
they would fly straight into heaven.

Peter. — Some of them came before with those bulls.

1513] SATIRISTS. 309

Julius. — And did not you let them in ?

Peter. — I ? Not one of them ! Christ has told me not to
open these doors to those who bring bulls heavy with lead,
but to those who have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and
sheltered the stranger. Many who have prophesied in his
name, and cast out devils, and done many wonderful works,
will be shut out; and do you think those are to be let in who
only bring a bull in the name of Julius? — But why do you
wear a sword ?

Julius. — That belongs to a pope. Would you have me go
to war without one ?

Peter. — I had only the sword of the Spirit, which is the
word of God.

Julius. — Malchus does not say so, whose ear you cut of.

Peter.— To defend my master. He bade me sheathe the
sword, because war is not proper for Christians. But do men
make themselves popes as you did ?

Julius. — Seldom otherwise.

Peter. — I should not have let any one become a deacon thus.
But what had those Venetians done whom you fought against ?

Julius. — They had invaded your patrimony.

Peter. — My patrimony? I left all and followed Christ.
And who was your enemy at Ferrara ?

Julius. — The son-in-law of that vicar of Christ, Alexander.

Peter. — What ! do popes have wives and children ?

Julius. — No wives, but children certainly.

Peter. — Have not such things made a council necessary ?

Julius. — When I became a pope I had to swear that I would
call one, but I absolved myself from my oath. My enemies
tried to assemble one and depose me, but popes can never be
dethroned.

Peter. — Not for murder ?

Julius. — Not for parricide.
. Peter. — Nor for lewdness ? Nor for blasphemy ?

Julius. — No, indeed. Add six hundred other sins. A pope
is not to be dethroned for them.

Peter. — A new honor, if he alone may sin and not be pun-
ished. Is there nothing for which he can be deposed ?

310 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1513

Julius. — Yes. For heresy ; but he alone can say what
this is.

Peter. — Why do popes fear councils so much ?

Julius. — You might as well ask why kings fear parliaments.
But their council came to naught. Times have changed since
your day. How I wish you could have seen me carried in my
golden chair by my soldiers, and heard the cannons ! What
should you have thought then ?

Peter. — That I saw the curse of the Church and the enemy
of Christ. He came down from heaven, not to teach philos-
ophy, but to make men scorn pleasure and trample on wealth.
You have said a blessing over others, and are yourself accursed.
You would open heaven for other men, and are yourself shut
out.

Julius. — Then you won't open the gate ?

Peter. — To any one else rather than to such a pest. Would
you have my advice? Take your men and money, and build
yourself a paradise, but take care the devils don't storm it.

Julius. — I have some months more of authority, and that
will be enough to conquer you. The sixty thousand souls that
died in my wars will follow me.

Peter. — O miserable Church ! Are the other bishops like
him?

Genius. — Most of them.

Peter. — Then no wonder that so few souls enter here.

That this powerful satire was written in Germany is par-
ticularly unlikely, because the emperor had finally become the
ally of Julius against the French, and only in manuscript could
Hutten circulate his Latin epigrams deriding this pope for his
offers to sell a heaven which he had no right to enter, advising
men to rob, murder, and ravish, because any one can make him-
self righteous cheaply at Rome, where God himself is sold,
and wondering what will become of the guilty city when Ger-
many opens her eyes. This knightly author did succeed in
publishing, in 1517, his Phalarismus, a comparison of the duke
of Wiirtemburg with the classic tyrants, and probably took
part about this time in the famous Letters of Obscure Men
(Epistulce Obscurorum Virorum). In 1509, a converted Jew,

1513] SATIRISTS. 311

named Pf efferkorn, had attempted, in concert with the Cologne
Dominicans, to destroy Hebrew literature, especially the Tal-
mud. Reuchlin, the founder of Christian study of the Old
Testament, published a protest, which was publicly burned at
Cologne and Mainz, and which nearly caused his condemna-
tion as a heretic. Learned men in German, French, Italian,
and English cities generally took his side, and welcomed the
Letters published in 1516, and purporting to be written by his
opponents, who were made to confess their ignorance, stupid-
ity, and sensuality in the worst possible Latin. One of them
has taken off his hat to Jews whom he supposed to be masters
of arts, and asks if he must go to the pope to get absolved.
Another confesses that there is no justice to be had at Rome
without money, and quotes a saying of Wympheling (pos-
sibly the author of a Defense of the Council of J3asel, written
by the emperor's order, and published in 1515), to the effect
that there are three kinds of monks — first, the holy and use-
ful, who are all in heaven ; second, the harmless, who are in
pictures ; and third, the living ones who do much mischief
through their pride as well as their fondness for women. The
popularity of this work was, I suspect, largely due to the cir-
cumstances which called it forth.

Hutten is supposed to have taken some share, especially in
the second part, published in 1517 ; but the originator appears
to have been Jager, or Crotus Rubianus, as he is usually
called, according to the custom then prevalent of translating
German names into Latin and Greek ones of similar meaning.
Thus Reuchlin was known as Capnio, and it is only as Celtes
that we hear of Pickel, or Meissel, who did good service near
the close of the fifteenth century in starting literary societies,
.and who in his Odes, published 1513, says : " You wonder
why I do not move my lips in church. There is a Divinity
in my heart. You wonder why I go so seldom. God is
within us. No need for me to gaze upon His painted image
in the temple. You ask why I love the. free fields, and the
warm sun. Here in Nature shines the glorious image of the
Almighty. Here I see His worthiest temple."

Only in letters, which could not be published before the

312 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1513

seventeenth century, did Math, or Mudt, a canon at Gotba,
who called himself, partially in reference to his red hair,
Mutianus Ruf us, venture to say : " What did men do in the
many centuries before the birth of Christ ? Did they wander
about, wrapped in thick darkness of ignorance, or did they
enjoy bliss and truth ? I will tell thee my opinion. The re-
ligion of Christ did not begin with his becoming man, but
was before all the centuries. For what is the true Christ but
that divine wisdom which was not given to the Jews alone in
the narrow land of Syria, but also to the Greeks, and Romans,
and Germans, though they had different religions ? Who is
our Saviour ? Justice, peace, and joy. That is the Christ
which has come down from Heaven." " The law of God, which
enlightens the soul, has two chapters, love God, and love all
men as thyself. This is the law of God, not written on stone
or parchment, but poured by the highest teacher into our
hearts." " The true body of Christ is peace, nor is there a
holier sacrament than that of mutual love." " Not wrong are
those Moslems who say that Jesus was never crucified. The
real Christ is a spirit not to be seen or touched." " In the
Koran we read, * He who worships the Eternal God, and lives
virtuously, wins Paradise, be he Jew, Christian, or Moslem.' "
" It is by an upright life that God is honored, and not by
change of raiment ; for the only true worship of God consists
in abstaining from vice. He is religious who has a pure
heart ; all the rest is smoke." " Only fools seek salvation in
fasting." " Jonah's whale was only a bath-house with this
sign ; and his gourd was a bathing hat. Yet more curious
things occur to me, but I can not tell them." " We must
never tell our secrets, or shake the people's faith, without
which the emperor could not maintain the State, or the pope
the Church, or we ourselves our property, but every thing
would go back to chaos." " There is one God and one God-
dess, but many shapes and names, Jupiter, the Sun, Apollo,
Moses, or Christ; Diana, Mother Earth, or Mary. But do not
reveal this. Keep it secret, like the mysteries of Eleusis."

Among Germans who kept their original names, one of the
most interesting, besides Hutten, is Bebel, who, in 1505, pub-

1513] SATIRISTS. 313

lished his Triumph of Venus, among whose votaries the first
place is given to the begging friars, and the second to the
popes, who have wrecked Peter's ship. Next year appeared his
facetiae, a collection of stories making fun of the Church.
Thus a student finds his doubts of the Trinity so ill-received
by a priest that he says : " Oh, well, I don't insist on my
opinion. Rather than make acquaintance with the fire, I am
willing to believe in a Quaternity." Two lansquenets on be-
ing refused admission by Peter, say : " Why should the wolf
blame the fox ? You denied your Lord three limes. None
of us ever did that." Then Peter is so ashamed that he lets
them in. A monk stays alone with a dying man, until he is
so far gone as to assent to every word. Then he calls in the
son, and asks, " Have you bequeathed this to our Order ? "
" And this ? " " And this ? " The dying man nods at every
question. At last his son says, "Father, shall I kick the
brother down stairs?" The usual nod is given, and out he
goes. Another monk says he has vowed, " Poverty when I
bathe, obedience when I eat, chastity when I am in church."

Among the most original and daring thinkers of the cen-
tury, was Cornelius Agrippa. He was but twenty-three
when, in 1509, he became professor at Dole, near Dijon and
Besan9on, and began at once to give public lectures in favor
of the Cabalistic philosophy, which had already been espoused
by Reuchlin. This system, mainly inportant as setting up an
authority independent of Bible or Church, is fully expounded
in Agrippa's De Occulta Philosophia. The three books
composing this work give, first, the Neo- Platonic fancies
about planetary influences, magic virtues of plants and
jewels, etc., then the Pythagorean superstitions about sacred
numbers, and finally the rabbinical dreams about the power
of holy names to rule angels and demons. That the bigotry
of the monks prevented him from publishing this work before
1531, or continuing his lectures, need not surprise, or greatly
distress us.

It was certainly unfortunate that persecution and poverty
forced Agrippa to wait twenty years before printing an essay
which even when it did appear, 1529, seems to have been by

314 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1513

far the earliest plea in favor of the emancipation of women,
unless this title be given to Plato's Republic. The little
treatise, De N^obilitate et Prcecellentia Foeminei Sexus, still
extant in fourteen pages of closely printed Latin, begins by
distinctly asserting that there is no sex in souls. " Eandem
ipsa mulier sortita est mentem." Woman, rather than man,
is then declared to be the latest and noblest work of God.
" Mulier autem fuit postremum Dei opus introducta a Deo in
hunc mundum, velut ejus regina." Female superiority is
further supported by many scriptural, historical, mytho-
logical and quasi-scientific arguments, a good summary of
which may be found in Morley's Life of Cornelius Agrippa
(volume 1, pp. 98-110.) Paul's command that " women keep
silence in the churches," is set aside as merely temporary.
X3f Joan of Arc, Agrippa says, " Who is able to praise
sufficiently that most noble, though low-born, girl, who,
when the English occupied France, took up arms like an
Amazon, and, leading the van herself, fought so vigor-
ously and successfully as to conquer the invaders in many
battles, and restore the kingdom to the French ? " Much
indignation is expressed against the injustice by which
" Women are forbidden to be literary." Other fine passages,
showing how much needed still to be done before one-half of
the world could begin to share what little liberty had been
already gained for the other half, are translated by Morley as
follows : " The tyranny of men, prevailing over divine rights
and the laws of nature, slays by law the liberty of women,
abolishes it by use and custom, extinguishes it by education.
For the woman as soon as she is born, is, from her earliest
years, detained at home in idleness, and, as if destitute of
capacity for higher occupations, is permitted to conceive of
nothing beyond needle and thread. Then, when she has
attained years of puberty, she is delivered over to the
jealous empire of a man, or shut up forever in a shop of
vestals. The law also forbids her to fill public offices ; no
prudence entitles her to plead in open court," etc. Women
are also said to be treated by the men as conquered by the
conquerors, not by any divine necessity, or for any reason, but

1516] SATIRISTS. 315

according to custom, education, fortune, and the tyrant's
opportunity.

The man who had the intelligence and gallantry to write
thus against that subjection of women, which is still the main
foundation of ecclesiastical oppression, was soon to be seen
.serving in arms against Julius II., and sitting, in 1511, among
the fathers of the anti-papal council at Pisa, where the popu-
lace mobbed the reformers. He made peace with Leo X.,
but new storms were soon to gather around his path.

England, too, had her heroes. When the Convocation of
the clergy met to punish heresy, Colet, dean of St. Paul's
and founder of its school, preached in the cathedral, on Feb-
ruary 6, 1512, a sermon which was at once published in both
Latin and English, and which ascribed all the trouble to such
plain facts as that the priests cared more for sensual pleasure
than any thing else, and were blinded by covetousness. Thus
was opened the session in which the bishop of London, on
being asked for texts commanding that heretics be put to
death, quoted, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live " (Exo-
dus, xxii., 18) ; and also, " A man that is an heretic after the
first and second admonition, reject," (Titus III., 10). The
last word of the latter verse in the Latin version, Devita, he
supposed to mean " deprive of life." A year later, on Good
Friday, Colet preached in favor of peace, to Henry VIII.,
who was then making war with the pope against France. The
dean used often to say, " Keep to the Bible and the Apostles'
Creed, and let doctors, if they like, dispute about the rest."
Moses had, he thought, accommodated what he said of the
•creation to the prejudices of the Hebrews. And even the
JZpistles of Paul seemed to him to grow mean as he admired
the majesty of Christ.

His friend, Thomas More, was but twenty-four, when he
persuaded Parliament to reject an exorbitant demand of Henry
VII., who had his father fined and imprisoned in consequence.
Six years later, in 1510, he spoke of Savonarola as a man of
God, in his translation of Pico's Life and Works into English.
In that peculiarly productive year, 1516, appeared his Utopia,
which was translated within thirty-five years into German,

316 TEE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AXD ART. [1516-

Italian, French, and English. In this ideal island, whose
name means Nowhere, there are no lawyers or monks, prop-
erty is held in common, nobody works more than six hours,
but nobody is idle, every child is educated, the priests are few
in number, and either married men or widower ; the king is
chosen by the subjects, and deposed, if he tries to be a tyrant;
other magistrates are elected annually; every one is allowed,
not only to hold what religion he pleases without fear of pun-
ishment, but to urge others to join it, provided that he use
no reproaches or violence, for which offenses he would be lia-
ble to banishment or penal servitude. Unbelievers in God
and immortality are excluded from office, and forbidden to
argue, except with priests, but are not molested otherwise. The
true object of life is declared to be earthly happiness, and
the Christian monks and priests are repeatedly condemned
as useless idlers.

The leader of the Northern Renaissance, Erasmus of Rot-
terdam, would still be the most readable author of his age, if
he had not written exclusively in Latin. His Praise of Folly,
and his Colloquies, lose but little by translation, however, and
would justify Charles Reade's calling him "the heaven born
dramatist of his century," if this period be understood as
beginning with his birth in 1466 or 7. He was a skeptic but
not an unbeliever, and the latter fact gives much weight to
his censures of the Church. His De Contemptu Mundi, writ-
ten before 1490, calls the monasteries schools of vice, where
no one can keep pure. His own experience also led him to see
that they were bad places for study, as he often says in his
letters, where he also .recommends that parish priests should
be permitted to marry, and monks and nuns to recall their
vows. His Adages, or Proverbs, which first appeared in 1500,
and grew to great bulk in successive editions, say : "Many
of the monks remind you of Paul, with their long beards,
pale faces, dark robes, and austere looks. Look within and
you will find only a glutton, a vagabond, a rake, or a robber."
"The bishops who hold the first rank are often the least
worthy of the name. Many a prelate is only a soldier, a mer-
chant, or a despotic prince." " The Vicar of Christ should

1516] SATIRISTS. 317

not be like Caesar or Alexander, Crassus or Xerxes, those
crowned brigands." " What is there in common between
Christ and Belial, the miter and the helmet ? " " How can he
who makes money the basis of his power preach scorn of
riches ? " "A heavenly-minded man should not burden himself
with earthly rule." "Christian princes are more tyrannical than
any pagans were, but even this is not so damnable as it is for
the priests, who ought to despise money and give freely what
they have freely received, to do nothing without pay. You
can not become- a Christian by baptism, unless you pay for it.
Neither can you be married. Confessions are heard only in
hope of reward, and the mass is celebrated for hire. The
priests will not sing or pray gratis. Scarcely will they pro-
nounce a benediction, unless something is given them. Even
their preaching is stained by greed. Nor, finally, will the
body of Christ be offered you without a fee. I need not speak
of what great harvests come from dispensations, indulgences,
«tc. Heathens could be buried gratis. Among Christians the
dead can not be covered with earth, until a bargain has been
made with the priest, and the higher the price the more honor-
able is the place of burial." Another striking passage is to
the effect that kings are justly compared to the eagle, which
is not only the most cruel but the most useless and hateful of
birds.

The same free spirit marks that protest in favor of the
superior sanctity of morality over ceremonies, the Hand-
book of a Christian Soldier, which was further hostile to the
power of the priesthood in its denial of the materiality of hell.
This book appeared in 1502, and was followed ten years later
by the Praise of Folly, which passed through twenty-seven
editions during the life of Erasmus, and was speedily trans-
lated out of the original Latin into the principal modern lan-
guages. Its goddess boasts of her sway, over the theologians
who think the Church will fall unless propped up with syllo-
gisms, over confessors who say that every sin can be paid for
in money, over monks who deem it the height of piety to be
unable to read and the worst of sins to break their own rules,
while they fail to fulfill Christ's chief command, to love one

318 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART [1516

another ; and over godless popes, who destroy souls by their
pestilential example and think of nothing but war, which is
most unchristian. This censure on the reigning pontiff,
Julius II., was repeated five years later in the Complaint of
Peace. No wonder that the Praise of Folly soon came under
papal censure, especially as its heroine, after quoting such
texts as, " We are fools for Christ's sake," " The foolishness of
God is wiser than men," " God hath chosen the foolish things
of the world to confound the wise, "Thou hast hid these things
from the wise and prudent," etc., says : " Christianity seems
to have some likeness to folly, but none at all to wisdom.
This is seen in the pleasure children, old people, women, and
fools take therein. Moreover the founders of religions have
always been men of great simplicity and strong hostility to
knowledge. And what can be more silly than to give up
one's property, take no notice of insults, make no difference
between friend and foe, despise pleasure, and live on fasting,
watching, tears, and labor, so as to wish for death ? "

That Erasmus did not undervalue the New Testament is
plain, not only from the desire he often expresses to have it
read by all men in their own tongue, but from the pains he
took to make the original text for the first time accessible ta
readers generally in 1516. He ventured, however, to omit
the famous text about the three heavenly witnesses, which
was not in his manuscripts, but which he unwillingly inserted
afterward, as well as to mention that the Apostles and Evan-
gelists wrote a barbarous Greek, quoted the Old Testament
inaccurately, attributed to Abraham (in Acts VII., 16) what
was really done by Jacob, spoke of a passage in Zechariah as
if it were in Jeremiah (Matthew XXVII., 9) and made Jesus
mistake the name of a high priest. (Compare Mark II., 26
with I. Samuel XXII., 1). Even then Erasmus expressed
doubts of the authenticity of Revelation, as he did later of other
parts of the New Testament, every manuscript of which he
knew contained some errors. His treatment of texts appealed
to for trinitarianism was so impartial, that he was nicknamed
Ariasmus and Errasmus. The latter appellation was also due
to some hasty work in editing the Fathers, with whom he

1516] SAVONAROLA AND THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 319-

began by publishing Jerome in 1516. This year, which was
that of Machiavelli's Prince, also saw the appearance of his
own book with a similar title, but with the aim to teaching
kings to govern for their people's good. The exact position
of Erasmus will be described when he can be contrasted with
Luther. Suffice it for the present to call him an Abelard
without any Heloise, and with a fondness for practical moral-
ity instead of metaphysics.

Holland had already produced a far bolder thinker, Her-
man Rysswick, who in 1502 was sentenced to imprisonment
for life for firmly maintaining that the world has existed from
all eternity, and never been created, what Moses says to that
effect being merely a dream ; that there is no hell and no other
life than^his ; that Aristotle and Averroes have come nearer
than any one else to the truth ; that Jesus Christ was a visionary
who has deluded the simple and brought the whole world into
misery; that all he taught is contrary to reason ; that he is not
the Son of God; that his coming was not needed for our salva-
tion ; and that the Bible is fiction. In 1512 he escaped from
prison and wrote several books, but was burned to death with
them, steadfast to the end.

The Northern Renaissance, while as hostile to Rome as the
Southern, was generally more favorable to the independent
growth of religion and morality. Germany in particular showed
a remarkably strong faith in a Christianity outside of the
Church, as will be more fully seen when we come to speak of
her Mystics.

VI.

The most famous martyr of this period for free speech,
though no free-thinker, was Savonarola, who risked assassina-
tion at Bologna for publicly calling its princess a devil, and
told the Florentine magistrates, when they advised modera-
tion, " I see you are sent by Lorenzo dei Medici. Tell him to
come and do penance for his sins, for the Lord spares no one.
I do not fear banishment, for your city is like a grain of len-
til upon the earth. I am a stranger, and he is first among

320 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART.

the citizens, but I shall abide and he must pass away," a
speech in harmony with the well-attested story, that he re-
fused to give the dying prince absolution, because he would
not restore liberty to Florence. There is also reason to be-
lieve that his fearless reproof kept the French king from
sacking the city. His heroism in opposing Alexander VI., is
all the more laudable, because he was a devout Catholic, pro-
testing to the last that no one could be saved outside of the
Church, and that the pope was its supreme head. Of justifi-
cation by faith he knew nothing, but taught that salvation
depended mainly on morality, though he was so far from un-
dervaluing monkish observances, that he forbade his monks to
have comfortable beds or handsome books, made them often
exchange breviaries, clothes, and cells, so as to have nothing
on earth they could think their own, and tried to make them
desert the stately convent in Florence, decorated by Fra An-
gelico, for a rude retreat in the wilderness. His novices were
encouraged to amuse themselves by questioning him about
hell ; and his sermons, during the eight years in which they
swayed Florence, 1489 to 1497, were directed, not only against
the immorality and unbelief then very prevalent, but also
against dancing, cards, perfumery, false hair, secular music,
classic poetry, ancient philosophy, drawings from the nude,
and portraits of living women in sacred pictures. Two im-
mense bonfires of anathematized articles, collected by boys of
ten to twenty whom he sent to search shops and houses, blazed
in the carnivals of 1497 and 1498, when many valuable man-
uscripts and works of ancient and modern art were destroyed.
He claimed to be guided, partly by the Bible, which he
allegorized in the delusive fashion then almost universal, so as
to say that forbidding Jacob to marry a Canaanite meant that
Christians should not study Plato and Aristotle, and partly
by his own prophetic visions. About the time that Columbus
first saw the New World, Savonarola saw an air-drawn fal-
chion, with the inscription, " The sword of the Lord cometh
swiftly upon the land," as he thought it did two years later in
the French invasion. The black cross of the wrath of God,
planted in Rome and reaching to the zenith, was soon

SA VONAEOLA AND THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 321

•shrouded in a thunder-storm, after which the golden cross of
the divine compassion was seen rising out of Jerusalem and
illuminating all the earth. Thus it was shown, as Savonarola
preached constantly, that the Church was to be chastened, and
then glorified, and that this was to be done quickly, so that all
the earth would be converted in ten years. Very bold was his
testimony against the vices of the priests, whom he warned
his hearers not to trust with women or children.

The prophet did not spare Alexander VI., who tried vainly
to tempt him to Rome, in 1495, by a request to be taught the
will of God ; or to bribe him with a cardinal's hat ; whereupon
Savonarola told his people, " All I hope for is that bloody hat
which Christ has given to his saints." That fall his preaching
was prohibited, but soon permitted again at the request of
the magistrates of Florence, now a republic under the direc-
tion of Savonarola, who recommended this as practically the
the best form of government for the city, and denounced all
who opposed it as enemies of Christ. A second prohibition,
a year later, he set aside at the entreaty of the magistrates,
pleading that he obeyed the intentions, though not the words,
of the pope, but saying that it might yet be necessary to imi-
tate Paul, who withstood Peter to his face. On May 12,
1497, shortly after the first holocaust of worldly vanities, its
author was excommunicated, on which he stopped preaching
and wrote his Triumph of the Cross. There he asserts the
superiority of in ward to outward religion, but admits all the
established Catholic doctrines, even saying, " He who sep-
arates from the Church of Rome, separates from Christ."
His popularity was now diminished by his suffering five polit-
ical adversaries to be executed in violation of a law he had
proposed himself. In February, 1498, he reappeared in the
pulpit and declared that popes had erred, even officially, and
that " He who rejects what I preach combats the gospel law
of love and is a heretic."

On the 27th, took place a second bon-fire, in which many
ancient busts of Cleopatra and Lucretia perished with por-
traits of the reigning beauties, an illuminated manuscript of
Petrarch, etc. That morning Savonarola appeared in public,

322 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART.

with the consecrated wafer in his hand, and called on God to
strike him dead if he were not really a prophet. The Francis-
cans had already proposed that he should submit himself to
the ordeal of fire, in company with one of their champions.
Savonarola refused, unless the ambassadors of the pope and
Christian kings would promise to attend, and, if he should tri-
umph, help him call a council to depose Alexander VI. and re-
form the Church. Such a council he recommended, on March
14, in letters to the monarchs of Germany, France, England,
Spain, and Hungary. Meantime his staunchest adherent, Fra
Domenico, volunteered to pass through the fire with a Fran-
ciscan ; and April 7 was appointed for the ordeal by the mag-
istrates, one of whom, however, proposed taking a tub of
water, and seeing if either champion did not get wet. How
the trial failed to take place in consequence of the reluctance,
first of the Franciscans and finally of Savonarola himself,
who insisted that his friend should carry the communion
bread into the flames, is powerfully told in Romola. That
a professed prophet, who had often declared himself ready for
martyrdom,should first expose his friend to it instead of himself,
and then refuse even this risk, naturally made the disappointed
spectators indignant. Only military protection brought Savon-
arola back to St. Mark's. The signory had already forbidden
him to preach, and now they banished him. The next day,
Palm-Sunday, he broke both commands ; and that night the
convent was the scene of a bloody conflict, which ended in his
arrest. During the trial which followed, he is said, perhaps
falsely, to have been tortured into denying his own inspira-
tion, but no word of doubt in him could be extorted from his
faithful Fra Domenico. Both were hung on May 23, when
Savonarola told the bishop, who declared him separate from
the Church in heaven as well as that on earth : " From the
Church on earth ; but from that in heaven ? No ; you have
no power for that." So died the principal representatives at
this time of that vision-led Mysticism which had already been
glorified by Joan of Arc.

The freest form of Mysticism, which followed individual
intuition in conscious independence of angels, Bible and

SAVONAROLA AND THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 323

Church, had been temporarily suppressed by persecution. The
visionary form, which, while professing obedience to the
Church, was constantly seeking guidance from angelic voices
and supernatural signs, is represented during this period only
by Hans Boheim and Savonarola. That docile type, most in
favor with the hierarchy, had now no advocate of importance,
except Thomas a Kempis, who died at the age of ninety, in
1471. By far the most important form of Mysticism was-
that which prevailed in Germany and the Netherlands during
the latter half of the fifteenth century and beginning of the*
sixteenth, and which, while making no very dangerous claims
of independence, and insisting too firmly on biblical author-
ity to give any injurious license to individual phantasy and
vain credulity, taught the superior holiness of a spiritual to
a ceremonial religion, the necessity of complete dependence
on God for guidance, and the duty of purifying the Church.
All attempts at reform had failed, because most Christians
thought they could not be saved without the help of the priest-
hood, and so were as patient as possible with its iniquities.
Vainly had the Church been implored to reform herself vol-
untarily. She had to be forced to do so by popular pressure,
and this could not be exerted except by men who knew that
she did not hold the only key to heaven. Hence the founda-
tion of the Reformation was the doctrine that salvation was
to be sought from Christ alone, and not from the priests ; in
other words, justification by faith.

This momentous dogma was dimly taught by John Goch,
who died in 1475, at Mecheln, where he had long been abbot.
More clear and full teaching was given by John of Wesel, so-
called from his birth-place, near Mainz. When the pope held
that great sale of indulgences, the Jubilee of 1450, Wesel
wrote a book to prove, that God alone could remit the real
penalties for sin, those he had himself imposed, that popes
and priests could only remove such punishments as they had
introduced, and that the traffic had no sanction either from
the Bible or the Fathers. To the objection, the Church can
not err, he answered, the whole Church can not, but part of
her may, and that part which sells indulgences does.

32-4 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART.

In 1460 Wesel began to preach at Mainz and Worms, and
openly taught that the Bible was the only safe guide, and that
men must look to Christ himself for salvation, which would
be given according to their inward faith, not their outward
observances. Among his sayings were these : " I despise the
pope, the Church, and the councils, and praise Christ." " I
hold nothing sinful which is not condemned in Scripture."
" Eat when you are hungry, even roast chicken on Good Fri-
day." " If Peter ordained fasting, it was pi obably to sell his
fish." On Monday, February 11, 1479, Wesel, then very old
and infirm, was arraigned in Mainz as a heretic, and urged to
recant. This he would not do, until the judges agreed to take
the guilt upon themselves. At last he yielded, and was sen-
tenced to life-long imprisonment, under which he died in
1481.

Eight years later died John Wessel, who was not persecu-
ted, except in the destruction after his death of most of his
writings. He had taught philosophy at Cologne, Louvain,
Heidelberg, and Paris, and won the title of Lux Mundi, " The
Light of the World." Luther said: "If I had read Wessel
earlier, my enemies would insist that I got all my views from
him." Both published Theses against indulgences, and in
very similar language. Wessel said, " Purity of heart is the
only acceptable penance." The fire of purgatory seemed to
him purely spiritual, and the presence of Christ in the eu-
charist merely symbolic. Justification by faith he taught
with the utmost plainness, saying, "He who thinks he is jus-
tified by works does not know what justification means."

The same momentous doctrine was taught early in the six-
teenth century by Staupitz, vicar-general of the German
Augustinians, at whose meals he commanded that the Bible
be read aloud, instead of the writings of their patron-saint
and reputed founder. Among his monks was Martin Luthe^
who renounced his brilliant prospects as a jurist and joined
the Order in 1505. He was killing himself by trying to carry
out rules for self-torture, which had grown more and more
cruel because so generally evaded, when Staupitz, whom he
henceforth called Father, saved his life and revealed his great

1510] SUMMARY. 325

mission, by teaching him that salvation could not come
through forms and ceremonies but only through faith in
Christ. This same lesson Luther also learned from the study
of the Bible, which was enjoined on him and his brethren.
What did most to emancipate him from ceremonialism was
his journey in 1511 to Rome, where he found the clergy
openly irreverent and scandalously profligate. The greatest
formalism he saw produce the least morality and religion.
Salvation by faith alone was the main theme of Luther's
preaching, which began in 1515 at Wittenberg, where he had
become professor. The next year he published the Theologies
Germanica, a mystical treatise written about a hundred and
fifty years before. " Here," he said, " I have found God as I
have not found Him in Latin, Hebrew, or Greek." Still a
year later, and his Theses against the indulgences brought on
that great contest between formalism and justification by
faith, which resulted in crippling the worst enemy of liberty
of thought.

VII.

The revival of ancient learning, the invention of printing,
the oceanic discoveries, and the new activity in literature, art,
and commerce, co-operated with the notorious wickedness
and worldliness of the popes in temporarily subverting their
authority in Italy, where their cause was so closely united
with that of religion, that both seemed hopelessly lost at the
beginning of the sixteenth century. The Renaissance of sec-
ular art could make no Protestants. Her best service to them
was in making the papacy too weak to put them down.
Italy's culture was too irreligious for her to be the cradle of
Protestantism. Germany was taught by her Mystics, some-
what aided by the Hussites, that religion could live independ-
ent of Rome, and German culture had only developed so far
as to furnish the reformers with weapons. In England, also,
there was too little unbelief to hinder revival of religion,
which Lollardism was able to assist powerfully, and which
the political liberty, then unequaled except in Switzerland,

326 THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE AND ART. [1516

greatly facilitated. France stood, intellectually as well as
geographically, midway between Italy on one side, and
Germany and England on the other. The medieval loyalty
was preserved only by Spain, now infuriated by recent
triumphs over the Moors, and enriched by her plunder in the
New World for yet bloodier contests.

Two distinct forms of literary activity now meet us. Valla,
Poggio, Pecock, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, Pompono-
tius, More, Muth, Celtes, Hutten, and Erasmus labored for
the advancement of learning and the diffusion of knowledge,
prompted by love of mental culture for its own sake, keeping
on good terms with the Church, but freeing themselves as far
as possible from the trammels of her authority. Colet,
Savonarola, Wesel, Wessel, Staupitz, and Luther sought to
make her not only more pure but more powerful, strove to
raise her members to the highest spiritual life, and valued
intellectual culture only as an aid in preaching spirituality.
It was the latter class that was destined to produce Jhe
Reformation. The two schools of thought were still friend-
ly, but a time of violent hostility was drawing near.

CHAPTER X.

THE REFORMATION.

The sixteenth century found the Church of Rome ruling
a larger part of Europe than ever before or since. Her
sway extended over the Spanish and Scandinavian penin-
sulas, Great Britain, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands,
France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Hungary, and Italy,
in which last country the pope was a political sovereign.
Elsewhere his power was partly due to the monks and nuns,
who held vast tracts of real estate, controlled most of the uni-
versities, and were directly under his own government, and
partly to that great hierarchy in which the parish priests were
marshaled under princely prelates. The latter organization
was not so fully subject to the pope as the former, but the
members of both were at work, controlling domestic life
through the confessional, checking all free expression of
thought, defending his authority in the pulpit as well as
through the press, and collecting vast sums of money for his
treasury. His power was now without canonical limits, coun-
cils being wholly out of favor. The laity were merely serv-
ants of the Church, which practically meant the pope and
.his subordinate monks and priests. Out of this Church there
was generally supposed to be no salvation, but the German
Mystics were already teaching the sufficiency of faith in
Christ to save the soul, without the help of priest or rite.
Vainly did the Italian free-thinkers try to cut the Gordian
knot by showing the ability of man to take care of himself
without any help from religion. The popular heart was set
on getting salvation, and propitiating the divine wrath. The
great question of the century was whether this could be

328 THE REFORMATION. [1516

done without leave of the popes. That the pontiffs failed
to maintain their religious supremacy was largely due to their
neglect to reform abuses, and largely also to their political
quarrels with the sovereigns of France, Germany, and En-
gland, as well as the incessant wars which these three powers
were waging against each other. Germany was peculiarly
ready for a schism, on account of the anarchy arising from
the efforts of the princes and free cities to establish their in-
dependence, of the knights to reatin their perishing privileges,
of the peasants and artisans to free themselves from oppres-
sion, and of the emperor to maintain his tottering authority.
Too many hostile interests were dividing and agitating Europe
in the sixteenth century to allow any efficient co-operation in
maintaining religious unity against mental independence, re-
cently awakened by the revival of classic learning, and by the
unprecedented activity in art, literature, discovery, and com-
merce, described in the last chapter. And now the printing-
press began to show itself mightier than the pope.

It is needless to say who took the lead in setting up not
only the authority but the saving efficiency of the Bible,
against the Church. Every one has heard of the publication
of the Theses against indulgences in 1517, the burning of the
pope's bull in 1520, and the heroic refusal to recant at the
Diet of Worms in 1521. Especially important is it to remem-
ber, that popular feeling in Germany was on Luther's side
from the beginning, especially in his native Saxony, in Hesse,
and in the free cities. In his early pamphlets, 133 of which
were printed in the year 1520 alone and widely circulated, he
denounced every form of ecclesiastical despotism, and spoke
with great power and plainness for the equality of the clergy
and laity, the right of each congregation to choose its own
pastor, independent of bishop, presbytery, prince, or patron,
and the liberty of each individual to follow the Bible as he
might understand it, without danger of punishment. This
last view is especially prominent in his Appeal to the German

1520] PROTESTANTISM. 329>

Nobility, published in August 1520, as a reply to the bull in
which his condemnation was partly based on his objecting to
the burning of heretics.

Luther's main purpose, however, was not to serve reason but
faith. From the beginning to the end of his career as a
preacher and author, he insisted on the dogma of salvation by
faith alone, with a zeal which led inevitably, not only to the
disparagement of practical morality, but to the requisition of
doctrinal uniformity. That Protestants were unable to remain
long at peace among themselves was largely due, as we shall
see, to the bigotry with which he treated all who differed from
him about baptism or the communion. While he was at the
Wartburg, where his prince concealed him after he had been
put under the ban at Worms, and where he did his greatest
work, the translation of the New Testament, he found that
Wittenberg had been invaded by daring Mystics, who pushed
the doctrine of salvation by faith alone so far as to abolish the
established ceremonies, oppose all institutions of learning, and
deny the authority of government. Never did he act more
bravely than when he renounced the protection of Frederic
the Wise, and showed himself openly at Wittenberg, but in
order to re-establis border he had to insist on the submission to
rulers enjoined by Jesus, Paul, and Peter, as well as to deny
the propriety of abolishing any existing custom or institution
not expressly forbidden in the Bible.

As early as 1522 he found himself thus forced by the ex-
cesses of his followers into reactionary conservatism, and this
position he maintained during his remaining twenty-four
years, which are comparatively unimportant, being occupied
partly in organizing the Lutheran Church in such subjection
to political rulers as has greatly hampered its independence,
and partly in carrying on bitter controversies wTith more lib-
eral thinkers, prominent among whom we shall find Erasmus.
The latter had said, " I dislike dogmatism so much that I gladly
rank myself among skeptics, wherever this is permitted by
the inviolable authority of the Bible, and the decrees of the
Church, to which I submit in all things." Luther replied in-
dignantly : " It is characteristic of the Christian mind to de-

-33(K THE REFORMATION. [1525

light in assertions." " The Christian wishes to be as certain as
possible, even in things which are unnecessary and outside of
scripture." " Take away assertions and you have taken away
Christianity." Never did Luther speak more plainly from his
inmost heart. The dispute in question was brought on by his
following Paul so literally as to assert the doctrine now called
Calvinism, but hitherto almost unknown to the Church, that
sin and damnation arise out of the arbitrary predestination of
God, Thus we find him maintain in reply to Erasmus : " The
immutable and eternal love and hatred of God toward men
existed before the world was made, and before there was any
merit or work of free-will." " He crowns a wicked man without
any merit, and damns another man perhaps not more wicked."
" Our salvation depends entirely on the will of God, in the
absence of which all that we do is evil, and we do this
necessarily." Even those who believe most firmly in neces-
sarianism, as expounded by Bain and Mill, must consider the
theory of Luther and Calvin singularly likely to hinder inde-
pendence of action and thought. I do not find my own liberty
to believe what seems true and do what seems right checked
by my belief, that all my present thoughts and actions are the
inevitable results, partly of my past life and partly of my
immediate surroundings ; but I should be crushed to dust by
the fancy, that I am only a tool in the hands of an angry God,
who will certainly make me serve His arbitrary will and may
possibly fling me into hell fire.

Luther's subjection to the letter of Scripture was made com-
plete by his rejecting the allegorical method, which enables
every expositor to justify his own opinions by calling them
the mysterious and hidden meanings of the book he pretends
to interpret. The servant of literalism was forced to excom-
municate merchants who took interest as usurers ; to live in
constant fear of the devil ; to sanction, though with great
reluctance, the Landgrave of Hesse's bigamy, because it could
not be proved unscriptural, to uphold the doctrine of the
trinity, despite his own doubts on the subject ; to reject the
Copernican theory, on the ground that it was the sun which
Joshua bade stand still, not the earth ; and to oppose forming

PROTESTANTISM. 331

such a league against the emperor as was necessary to prevent
the extinction of Protestantism. Luther objected to this
alliance, not merely because the New Testament commanded
obedience to monarchs, but because such texts as, " This is my
body " and " Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood ye
have no life in you," seemed contrary to the views of men
whom it was proposed to accept as allies. They agreed with
him on other points, and pleaded that here they were only giv-
ing the Bible such an interpretation as it required by reason,
but Luther answered : " Reason is the devil's harlot, and can
do nothing but blaspheme." He refused the hand of friend-
ship which Zwingli offered him with tears in his eyes. Per-
haps the speedy defeat and death of the Zurich reformer in
the battle of Cappel, October 11, 1532, was due to his being
left to stand thus alone against the Roman Catholics. Luther
now grew more and more intolerant. In 1538 he advised the
banishment of heretics, and he seems to have even consented
to their execution. One of his last books urges that the syna-
gogues of the Jews be burned down, their books taken away,
their worship suppressed, and their men and women enslaved
•without pity. We must certainly thank him for doing more
than any one else to check the tyranny of Rome ; but to him
are also in great measure due that servitude to the letter of
the Bible, that hostility to free thought, and that exaltation of
theology above morality which have always characterized
Protestantism. That this system has not also been marked by
the prevalence of predestinarianism and passive obedience is
no fault of his. He did greatly help free thought by dividing
her enemies into two hostile camps, but this aid was uninten-
tional and they remained her enemies still.

That the Lutherans succeeded in establishing their independ-
ence against both emperor and pope, is partly due to the
dissension between these two potentates, but partly also to
the courage of a leader who would not let himself be fettered
by texts. It was the Landgrave of Hesse, Philip the Magnan-
imous, who in 1529 brought about that declaration of religious
independence from which comes the name of Protestant, and
who soon after opened the way for this new faith into Wiir-

332 THE REFORMATION.

temburg with the sword. He was able, despite the opposition
of Luther, to keep up union enough among the German
Protestants to prevent the emperor from attacking them
before 1546. For the defeat that year at Miilberg, he was
not responsible ; the captivity that followed did not crush
him ; and at length he was able to crown his labors, in 1555,
by the treaty of Augsburg, which permitted each state and
free city in Germany to maintain its own faith and worship,
without interference from its neighbors or the emperor. This
of course did not hinder any petty prince from persecut-
ing his own subjects, a practice from which Philip himself kept
unusually free. It must further be mentioned to his credit,
that his personal preference was for a congregational system
of church government, which, however, the theologians
around him considered impracticable.

It was fortunate for the German Protestants that Henry
VIII., who had formerly been a stanch ally of the emperor
and a zealous writer for the papacy against Luther, was driven,,
by his desire to get divorced from Catharine of Arragon and
married to Anne Boleyn, into a rupture with the pope, which
became final in 1534, when the Parliament declared the king
the only supreme head on earth of the English church. The
clergy had already been forced to acquiesce by threats of pros-
ecution, for violating the statute of 1353 against appeals to
Rome, and their submission was insured by the suppression
of the monasteries, whose gross licentiousness was fully proved
in parliament, and whose vast wealth was so freely distributed
among the nobility and gentry, that they were firmly bound
to the new policy. Great was the desire, especially among
the Lollards, to have the Reformation made as complete in
England as in Germany and Switzerland ; and that such a
change was not carried out before the death of Henry VIIL,
was due mainly to the vigor with which, at the same time he-
beheaded Sir Thomas More and other Roman Catholics as
traitors for refusing to acknowledge his supremacy over the
Church, he burned Protestants as heretics for disbelieving in
transubstantiation. Among the victims sent to the stake in
1546 for denying that a priest could change bread and wine by

PROTESTANTISM. 333

miracle into the body and blood of Christ, was a saintly woman
only twenty-six years old, whose constancy on the rack saved
the lives of many noble sympathizers, among whom was prob-
ably the queen herself, and whose only offense was stated
thus by herself in Newgate. " The bread is but a remem-
brance of his death, or a sacrament of thanksgiving for it."
" Written by me, Anne Ascue, that neither wish death nor
yet fear his might, and as merry as one that is bound toward
heaven." A creed as Protestant as Luther's, or even Zwingli's,
was enacted during the reign of Edward VI., and too firmly
established to be rooted out by Bloody Mary, though she re-
taliated for the oppression which she had suffered from her
father as well as from her brother's ministers, by burning
more than three times as many heretics as had previously
been put to death in England. This persecution was made
peculiarly cruel by the refusal, almost for the first time
among Catholics, to spare the life of those who should recant,
as for instance did Archbishop Cranmer, who, however, re-
gained his courage at the last. Sympathy with him and
many braver victims, like Rogers, Hooper, Taylor, Ridley,
and Latimer, did much to make Romanism so hated that
Elizabeth found no difficulty on her accession, November 17,
1558, in making England permanently Protestant. The great
body of the clergy not only submitted to these four great
-changes in creed and ritual, made by as many successive sov-
ereigns within thirty years, but preached as their rulers bade
them. And the result was the establishment of the present
system by which pastorates, when not actually sold in open
market, have been filled by official or aristocratic patronage,
exerted with very little regard to the wishes of the parish-
ioners, and by which the bishops have been so entirely the
creatures of sovereigns and prime ministers as to have no
right to call themselves successors of the Apostles, who filled
the first vacancy in their own body by a popular vote, instead
of accepting a nomination from Tiberius or Pontius Pilate.

Neither in England nor in Germany were the rights of the
church-members recognized so fully as at Geneva. This city
had cast off the yoke of her bishop in 1535, after a struggle

334 THE REFORMATION.

whose hero, Bonivard, had suffered for six years, at Chillonr
in a prison from which he issued just in time to oppose the
compulsory imposition of Protestantism upon the peasants.
The ruling spirit, however, was that of John Calvin, who
came to Geneva in August, 1536, shortly after publishing that
wonderfully able work for a man of twenty-six, his Institutes,
which are equally remarkable for uncompromising independ-
ence of Romanism, for unreserved submission to the authority
of Scripture, and for pitiless plainness in teaching total de-
pravity, arbitrary election, and irresistible predestination, not
only of God's favorites to be saved, but of all others to be
damned. That in which Calvin differed most widely from
other reformers was his hatred of dancing, novel-reading,
games of chance, drinking, theatricals and gay attire. All
these had been made criminal ; and a bride had been put in
prison for going to church with her hair hanging down too
far, before Calvin's exclusion of the entire population from
the Lord's Supper caused his banishment early in 1538. His
aid in keeping down Romanism and immorality could not be
long spared, and in 1541 he was suffered finally to establish
such a proscription, not only of free thought but of amuse-
ments, as had never before been seen in Christendom. Stay-
ing away from church was now, for the first time, made
criminal. In the years 1558 and 1559, four hundred people
were punished for dancing, laughing in church, dressing too
gayly, and similar offenses. Blasphemy was treated as a cap-
ital crime, and far worse than theft, in conformity with the
biblical legislation, which was enforced with peculiar severity
against witches, of whom one hundred and fifty were burned
within sixty years. Calvin had opposed persecution, while in
danger of suffering it himself, but how far he followed the Old
Testament rule, as soon as he had the power to do so, will be
seen on subsequent pages. It must here be noticed that pecu-
liar advantages for detecting heresy were secured by the
ministers visiting every house in Geneva once a year to ques-
tion the inmates about their faith, a custom still surviving in
a comparatively harmless form. Books were suppressed so
rigidly that Bonivard was unable to publish a history which

PROTESTANTISM. 335

displeased Calvin, and the latter's own literary utterances
were occasionally checked when opponents happened to be in
office. A woman was whipped for singing ordinary words to
a psalm-tune, a child beheaded for striking his parents, a man
imprisoned for reading Poggio, another for calling his little
son Claude, when the minister preferred Abraham, and a
whole family, including a magistrate, for dancing at a wedding.
This opposition to public amusements made the churches the
only legitimate places for meeting socially, and so greatly
increased the power of the clergy. The same result was pro-
moted by making the Calvinistic ministers much less depend-
ent on the State than were the Lutherans or Anglicans. The
single congregations regained much of the liberty they had
enjoyed in apostolic times, though they did not go so far
beyond this pattern as to encourage individual independence,
but on the contrary permitted great despotism to be exerted
by the consistory of ministers and pious laymen. Calvin's
legitimate successors are the Presbyterians, rather than the
Congregationalists, and his immediate followers were so
firmly organized as to be able to resist persecution with un-
usual success, especially in France, Scotland, and Holland.

In these three countries there were still to be bloody con-
flicts about religion ; but Protestantism had reached substan-
tially its present limits in Europe at the time of its establish-
ment by the Scottish Parliament in 1560. It was also supreme
in England, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Prussia, Hesse,
Saxony, Wurtemberg, and other German states, besides sev-
eral of the Swiss cantons, especially Geneva, Berne, Zurich,
and Basel. In France it was increasing so rapidly that the
king had made peace in 1559, with England and Spain, in
order to have the latter power co-operate in a general suppres-
sion of heresy. Of this attack Holland was already prepared
to stand the brunt successfully, and Belgium contained de-
cidedly more Protestants than at present. So did Bavaria
and Austria, where there was great tolerance, as was also the
case in Bohemia, Poland, and Venice. Rome was now in such
danger that she had to reform herself, and give up, finally, the
manners of the Borgias for those of the Borromeos. She was

336 THE REFORMATION. [1525

also obliged to close that long warfare for larger territory
against Catholic sovereigns which had been the safety of
Protestantism, to abandon all attempts at domineering over
kings and emperors, and to become the accomplice of Philip
II. and Catherine de' Medicis. The inquisition had been re-
vived in 1542 by Paul III., under whose sanction the first
Index of Prohibited Books was compiled five years later by
the University of Louvain. The foremost adviser of these
measures assumed the tiara, as Paul IV., in 1555, and ruled so
intolerantly, that his death in 1559 was welcomed by the burn-
ing of the palace of the inquisition by a Roman mob. His
policy survived him, however, and mental liberty remained
much more restricted, throughout Italy, than during the
seventy years after the death of Paul II. in 1471. Prominent
among the champions of reaction was the Society of Jesus,
which had been authorized by the pope in 1540, despite the
belief of the cardinals that monastic orders were too liable to
corruption, had made the breach with Protestantism irre-
parable at the Council of Trent, and had shown singular
capacity for destroying freedom of thought, especially among
its own members. Alarm at the progress of the Reformation
assisted the triumph of the spirit of Loyola and Philip II.
over that of Erasmus.

in.

We have seen how much the Praise of Folly, the Christian
Soldier, and the Adages did early in the century to expose
the sins of monks, priests, bishops and popes, and increase the
authority of moral laws. The Colloquies, which appeared in a
piratical edition, 1521, and in an authorized one three years
afterward, are still well worth reading on account of the life
they give to such characters as the dissolute soldier with a con-
science in perfect peace, because the Dominicans would sell
him pardon for any sin, even robbing and murdering Jesus ;
the pious girl, driven from the convent by dangers of which
she cannot speak ; the pilgrims who have found the rags with
which Becket wiped his nose treasured as holy relics ; the prior

OIE1

1525] ERASMUS AND THE LIBERAL CATHOL?

who goes regularly to brothels but had rather die than eat
meat ; the dying swindler sent to heaven by monks who fight
over his bounty at his funeral ; the tavern-keeper whose pastor
is his best customer ; the learned woman obliged to defend her
tastes against an abbot who boasts that there are no books in
his room; and the Virgin Mary complaining that her worshipers
make prayers too indecent for her to hear. No wonder that
this book soon passed under the papal ban, or that in 1527 it
.had a sale of twenty-four thousand copies. Luther's cause
had already been greatly helped by the censures which Eras-
mus passed on the monks in his second edition of the New
Testament, 1518, and a year later, in his Paraphrase of Cor-
inthians, on fasting, excommunications, and indulgences. In
1525 he pointed out the lack of biblical authority for confes-
sion to priests, as well as the dangers to chastity. Luther had
only been married about a year, when Erasmus printed his
declaration that matrimony is holier than celibacy, and ought
to be permitted to priests. Shortly before his death, which
took place in 1536, appeared his Art of Preaching, complain-
ing bitterly of the so-called pastors who spent the day in
taverns and were ruled by mistresses. In his private letters
ho never spoke but with indignation of the condemnation of
Luther, and the burning of heretics, or neglected to urge the
necessity of a reformation. His own plans for this were
adopted by the Duke of Juliers with great success.

That Erasmus never became a Lutheran was largely due to
his loyalty to principles, some of which are also ours. He
believed that progress could best be promoted by popular
education, and that the circulation of the Bible and the Fathers
of the Church would make all Christians willing to give up
indulgences, the inquisition, and other abuses, which would
soon be seen to be innovations. It was not only devotion to
this plan of peaceable reform, but hatred of the persecu-
tions which he saw Luther and his followers call down upon
themselves, that made him blame their violence. Still more
fatal to any harmony between Erasmus and Luther was the
fact, already noticed, that the former was naturally skeptical
and made as much use as possible of what little liberty he

338 TEE REFORMATION. [1525

found in the Church, while the latter quitted her communion
because his fondness for dogmatism made him ready for any
sacrifice in order to propagate a new and narrow creed of his
own. Protestantism was too far committed to the literal in-
fallibility of the Bible to have any claim on the impartial and
enlightened critic who kept pointing out the fatal discrep-
ancies, not only between the Old and New Testaments, but
between the various manuscripts of the original Greek, and
who did much to shake belief in the authenticity of Hebrews,
James, II. Peter, III. John, Jude and Revelations. The Epis-
tle to the Romans, which was the most precious part of the
Bible to Luther and Calvin, and was constantly appealed to by
them in support of their darkest doctrines, seemed to Erasmus
too obscure to have much value. The doctrine of the trinity
for which one at least of these fathers of Protestantism was
ready to persecute to the death, was not recognized as scrip-
tural by Erasmus, who even ventured to leave out the only
text strongly in its favor, the spurious passage about the three
heavenly witnesses, until compelled to insert it by the Church.
Of the Old Testament he sai^i frankly that most of it should not
be read by uneducated people, because the history is so obscure
as well as immoral, and many of the riddles are inextricable.
The most powerful advocate of the sanctity of morality in
all that century was never more consistent than in attacking
the doctrine of justification by faith, which has caused belief
to be valued as a substitute for virtue, and creeds to be swal-
lowed as panaceas warranted to heal all diseases of the soul.
But it was only after repeated requests of both pope and em-
peror, that Erasmus undertook to point out the most dan-
gerous error into which Luther, like Calvin, was led by refus-
ing to consider faith as the reward of virtue, and protested
against ascribing man's spiritual condition and destiny wholly
to the arbitrary choice and resistless will of God. Thus
opened a controversy in which neither side was able to reach
ground which could now be held by mental science, but in
which Erasmus was much more favorable than his adversary
to the process by which a scientific view could be developed.
Justly does Hallam call him " the first conspicuous enemy of

1525] ERASMUS AND THE LIBERAL CATHOLICS. 339

ignorance and superstition," and he may also be placed among
the most efficient opponents of persecution, as well as most
widely read of liberal writers before Voltaire. Others
have spoken more boldly, but no one ever led a larger num-
ber of his contemporaries on into more advanced ideas than
they could have reached without his help.

Many other Roman Catholics were able to remain within
the communion and yet do good work for tolerance, as well as
for the kindred doctrine that morality is holier than forms
and creeds. Of the author of Utopia, which, during this-
period was often reprinted and translated into modern lan-
guages, I need only say that the loyalty to truth with which
he mounted the scaffold, rather than take an oath recognizing
the king as Head of the Church, and as lawfully divorced,
forces me to put full faith in his own declaration that he was
not himself guilty of persecution, as has been alleged.

That daring defender of the truth of Neo-Platonism and the
capacity of woman, Cornelius Agrippa, was expelled in 1520
from Metz, where he had been laboring usefully as a physi-
cian, because he saved a poor woman from condemnation for
witchcraft by the inquisition. Ten years later, he called
down on himself the poverty and exile in which he died in
1535, by publishing an elaborate exhibition of the vices and
errors of monks, lawyers, doctors, professors, nobles, and kings.
Morality he declares more conducive than learning to hap-
piness. Religion seems to him essential for public welfare
and to consist in faith rather than ceremony, yet not in faith
alone, as taught by the Protestants, but in faith combined
with brotherly love. His censures fall not only on the monks,
who ought to have ropes around their necks instead of their
waists, and the popes, who have turned the house of prayer
into a den of thieves, by waging war and selling impunity
for sin, but on the heretics, who would divide the Church.
Among the most original and useful passages are those show-
ing that nobility was originally a reward for serving the anger
or lust of monarchs, that the noblest of animals, trees and
metals, like lions, tigers, eagles, dragons, laurels, and gold,
are always the most useless, and pernicious ; that heraldry is

340 THE REFORMATION. [1525

right in giving noblemen the figures of cruel monsters and
birds of prey, and that the royal court is a hot-bed of licen-
tiousness.

The tolerance advocated by Agrippa, More, Erasmus, and
other writers under the reign of bigotry, was not put into
legislation until 1561, when the French chancellor L'Hopital,
secured the enaction of laws permitting the Huguenots to
hold public worship, and making such provisions against their
Buffering or offering sectarian violence, as might have averted
the civil wars which began soon afterward. France had few
men wise enough to agree with him when he said, in the
king's name, on December 13, 1560 : "God does not wish to
have his cause defended by weapons." " Not by their help did
our religion begin, nor is it to be preserved." " The dagger
has no power over the soul." " Let us do away with those
diabolical names, words of faction and sedition, Lutheran,
Huguenot, and Papist. Let us keep the name of Christian."

With these great men should be mentioned Dumoulin, whose
exposure of the abuses in papal appointments to office
caused his house to be mobbed at Paris, and whose lectures
on theology proved so unwelcome in Protestant Germany that
he had to return to France ; Cardinal Contarini, who died of
grief at his failure to reconcile Lutherans and Catholics by
mutual concessions in 1542 ; and that bishop of Macon, who,
when asked by a French cardinal, if he thought he behaved
episcopally in interceding for heretics, answered, " I speak
like a bishop, but you act like an executioner."

And high among the Roman Catholics who labored in vain
to make their Church pure and tolerant stands the Queen of
Navarre and sister of Francis I., Marguerite d'Angouleme,
who protected Marot, Dolet, Desperriers, Rabelais, and other
liberal authors, against persecution, and who probably re-
ceived help from them in composing her sprightly comedies,
as well as a collection of stories somewhat resembling the
Decameron, but written with much more regard for morality.
Her liberality in relieving the sufferings of the refugees at
Geneva and Strasburg was all the nobler because it was not
the act of a Protestant but of a tolerant Romanist.

1525] ERASMUS AND THE LIBERAL CATHOLICS. 341

There is strong reason to believe that it was mainly the
unwillingness of Queen Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and
Isabella, and mother of Charles V., to hear mass or see
heretics burnt alive, which caused her to be put to the torture
even in her girlhood, and to be kept for nearly fifty years in
a prison where she never saw the light of day, nor received a
single visitor. That her alleged insanity was merely a pre-
text for her exclusion from the throne of Castile, is shown by
the letters of her jailer to Charles V., by the offer of mar-
riage made by that shrewdest of monarchs, Henry VII.,
shortly after her incarceration, and also by her demeanor
during the three months for which she was set at liberty by
the patriot-chief, Padilla, who might possibly have established
her permanently on the throne, if she had consented to sanc-
tion his opposition to her undutiful son. The cardinal, who
afterward became Pope Adrian VI., saw her at this time,
after she had been fourteen years in prison, and wrote to his
sovereign that all her attendants were confident that she was
then as capable of reigning as her mother, Isabella, and had
always been so. It may have been desire to please Charles V.,
which led him to express some doubts about her complete
sanity, which had, perhaps, by this time been impaired by
long seclusion from fresh air and daylight. Only the wish to
prevent another sedition seems to have led the nobles, who
put down the rebellion, to break their promise to her, and
send her back to prison, where she remained until her death.
(See Revue des Deux Mondes, June 1, 1869.)

Her persecution, like that of Savonarola and the German
Mystics, and like the failure of Erasmus to reach lucrative
preferment, shows that the best element in the Church was
too weak to take the lead, or even to protect itself against
most atrocious cruelty. Love of power forced the Church to
reserve her high places for men of unscrupulous and pitiless
craft. Sanctity was a secondary consideration, as is manifest
from the fact that scarcely any of the medieval or modern
popes were pronounced fit for canonization, even by the most
partial judges. Men and women who would not serve the
inquisition, were fortunate if they escaped its fangs.

342 THE REFORMATION. [1525

IV.

Meantime the innovators whom Luther drove out of Witten-
berg, in 1522, had discovered that infant baptism is not sanc-
tioned, either by the Bible or by the principle that nothing is
a sacrament to any one who does not believe in it. Accord-
ingly they had insisted that all Christians should receive the
rite on reaching mature years and without regard to any pre-
vious celebration. This doctrine soon gained thousands of
followers who were called Anabaptists, and underwent ter-
rible persecutions, especially in Bavaria, Austria, and Holland.
Many fugitives from this last country were burned alive in 1535
and afterward in England, where Joan of Kent was among
their disciples. Their general disbelief in the Trinity and
endless misery, and their faith in morality as necessary for
salvation did much to make them hated ; as also did the dis-
regard for marriage and other social institutions, and readi-
ness to encourage insurrection, which characterized many of
the early leaders. Prominent among these was Melchior Hoff-
mann, whose disciples, the Melchiorists, became infamous at
Miinster, but whose own imprisonment, which proved fatal at
Strasburg in 1540, was largely due to his teaching that Jesus
is not God but only His prophet, and that the atonement still
leaves much for men to do in order to be saved. Among his
sayings are these : " It would be a mischievous God who should
call all men to His supper, and yet will that some should
not come." " It would be a lying God who should openly
give a man grace, but yet secretly prepare hell for him." The
first result of importance from Anabaptism, however, was the
Peasants' War.

The preachers of liberty were nowhere more welcome than
among the German peasants, of whom some were still serfs
and the rest merely tenants, plundered almost to the point of
starvation by heavy rents and arbitrary exactions, denied in-
struction, punished with lawless cruelty, forbidden to defend
their crops against wild beasts, or their families against high-
born ravishers, harassed by constant warfare, and deprived of
all means of redress except insurrection. Again and again

1525J PRACTICAL REFORMERS. 343

had the Bundschuh, or laced shoe-worn only by peasants, been
set up as a standard ; and these revolts had been suppressed
so cruelly that a fierce thirst for vengeance was added to the
hunger for liberty. Luther*s New Testament showed the
primitive equality of all Christians, and this fact was urgently
insisted on by the Anabaptists and other religious innovators,
who saw that their only chance of success or even tolerance,
was in a democratic revolution. Lay preachers and exiled
priests, prominent in which latter class was Miinzer formerly
of Zwickau, traveled to and fro, showing the peasants that
Christianity knew nothing of nobles and landlords, and that
all men were equal by the law of God, and should be so by
that of man. The age of the Spirit and kingdom of heaven
upon earth were declared to be near at hand. Saxony, Alsace,
Lorraine, Baden, Wurtemberg, Bavaria, Austria, and the Tyrol
heard the new gospel of revolution ; and some of its preach-
ers were sent to the stake early in 1524 by the Roman Catho-
lics. The friends of freedom were now binding themselves
together from village to village, gaining partisans in many
cities, and preparing for a general rising.

The revolt was precipitated by a certain countess Helena, in
Southern Baden, who used to call on her peasants to cease har-
vesting, or resting onf east-days, and pick strawberries and snail-
shells. On St. Bartholemew's day, August 24, 1524, twelve hun-
dred rebels took the field at Waldshut, near Basel, under the
black, red, and yellow flag, often to wave in Germany thence-
forth. The number of this Evangelical Brotherhood, as it was
called, rose to six thousand men before the end of the year,
and no one dared attack it, especially as no violence was
committed, and nothing asked for except the redress of
manifest grievances. The peasants of Baden, Wurtemberg,
and Bavaria, had risen generally on Sunday, April 2,
1525, and presented twelve articles which would have given
parishioners power to choose and dismiss their pastors, reduced
tithes and rents, abolished serfdom, illegal punishments, and
arbitrary exactions, and permitted hunting, fishing, and cutting
of timber. Luther at first approved of these demands, most
of which have since been granted. The first blood shed was

344 THE REFORMATION. [1525

in routing a band of Wiirtembergers who bore a black and
red banner with a white cross. The red flag was also flying
in this state, where there were many defeats and executions,
but no redress. It was in retaliation for these cruelties, that
castles and convents began to be plundered and burned, and
images of saints and crucifixes to be broken up ; for the
Church was known to be on the side of the oppressors.

A great army gathered in the Neckar valley, where the
Counts of Hohenlohe had to grant the Twelve Articles, and
shake hands with the peasants, who called them " Brother
Albert and Brother George." Two knights, who loved lib-
erty and hated priests, Gotz von Berlichingen, who has been
immortalized by Goethe, and Florian Geyer, joined the rebels,
and took the lead on Easter Sunday, April 16, in storming
Weinsberg. The commander, a Count of Helfenstein and
son-in-law of the Emperor Maximilian, had murdered
straggling peasants, and tried to burn villages, while he pro-
fessed to carry on negotiations, and had finally fired on the
ambassadors of the rebels. He and most of his knights and
soldiers were, however, permitted to surrender to the peasants,
who abstained from plundering, and shouted as they entered
the city, "All the burghers will be safe in their houses."
Most of the leaders wished to keep on good terms with the
nobles, that they might help each other curb the tyranny of
the princes, and seize on the wealth of the clergy. Only
speedy vengeance was thought of by the band which had the
charge of the prisoners, all of whom were slaughtered before
sunrise, without the knowledge of most of the host, and
greatly to the indignation of Florian, who at once departed
with his own followers. This bloodshed called out general
indignation, and even Luther was provoked into calling on the
princes to slaughter the rebels without pity, like mad dogs.
Never again was he as popular as before, and long afterward
he found it unsafe to visit his dying father, lest this sanction
of slavery and massacre should be remembered against him.
The princes, however, thought their best policy was to prom-
ise redress, and secretly gather mercenaries. The revolution
had now spread from Salzburg to Lorraine, whose duke is es-

1525] PRACTICAL REFORMERS. 345*

pecially infamous for making a treaty, and then commanding
a massacre. The central body, which had many women in its
ranks, was under the nominal command of Gotz von Berlich-
ingen, who was either unable or unwilling to organize his
forces sufficiently to avoid a ruinous repulse at Wtirzberg, on
May 15. The most northerly focus of revolution was Miihl-
hausen, in Saxony, where Munzer declared that the reign of
the Holy Ghost was to be inaugurated, reason to be placed
above the Bible, all men to be recognized as capable of inspira-
tion, Jesus to be considered only a great prophet, heaven and
hell to be no longer looked for except on earth, and all oppo-
nents to be slaughtered, as had been the enemies of Israel. A
too eager associate hurried him into action, before he had
time to drill his men or buy weapons, especially powder,
for which he had sent in vain to Nuremberg. His fortress
of chained wagons was stormed on May 15, by the Land-
grave of Hesse, his rainbow banners taken, and five thou-
sand peasants slaughtered in the massacre, after which came
merciless executions. Munzer seems to have maintained the
justice of his cause, even on the rack. As he mounted the
scaffold he told the princes before him that they must set
their people free, or perish like Saul and Ahab. Other disas-
ters followed rapidly. Florian died fighting to the last. The
Weinsberg murderers were burned alive, as were many of the
captured preachers. Gotz von Berlichingen saved himself by
betraying and deserting his comrades. Wendel Hippler, the
most far-sighted and moderate of the leaders, perished in a
dungeon. A hundred thousand peasants were put to death
that summer, besides the women and children wrho died of
hunger. The survivors were heavily fined, and the old abuses
kept up except in Baden. But few of the thousand castles
and monasteries which had been burned were ever rebuilt, how-
ever, and it must have been due in part to the peasants being
treated better than before, when the first storm of fury had
spent itself, that they never afterward made such an insur-
rection.

The revolt of the populace of Munster, under Anabaptist
leaders, who had been ordained for very different work

34G " THE REFORMATION. [1525

by Hoffman, did not extend beyond that city, where,
after horrible excesses of tyranny and licentiousness, it
was cruelly suppressed in June, 1535. The immediate
result of this insurrection was that Bucer, the Protestant
pastor of Strasburg, published a book that very year, urging
that heretics ought to be put to death with their wives
and children, like the Canaanites. Similar ground was taken
in 1536 by Melanchthon, with whose decided approbation
thf ee communistic Anabaptists, one of them a tailor, named
Kraut, had been beheaded in Jena on January 27. The Hes-
sian synod of Homburg recommended on August 7 that all
preachers against infant baptism, marriage, private property,
or magistrates be banished, and if they returned, put to
death ; but the Landgrave never went beyond the milder
sentence. Other princes were less tolerant, especially in
Roman Catholic Germany and in Holland, where even the
peaceably inclined Anabaptists, whose leader was Simon
Menno, suffered horribly.

Nothing shows better the degradation of the German peas-
antry than the fact that they found no champion in literature
until long afterward. Lyndsay did something to emancipate
his own countrymen ; but not before the eighteenth century
did the downtrodden European gain an advocate as eloquent
and zealous as was secured early in the sixteenth by the en-
slaved American. Las Casas had become aware as early as
1514 of the cruelty and injustice under which the natives of
the West Indies were being exterminated, had set free his
own slaves, and had devoted himself to agitating for the
emancipation and protection of the race. For this purpose
he brought over in 1521 a philanthropic association of colo-
nists, but the plan was frustrated by the general opposition
of the Spaniards, from whom his life was often in danger.
In 1537 he was able to Christianize a large district of Central
America, according to his theory of peaceable conversion, ad-
vocated in ^a treatise which was widely circulated, but never
published. He maintained not only that persuasion is the only
way to make converts, but that it is wrong to wage war
against unbelievers without special provocation. The latter

1525] PRACTICAL REFORMERS. 347

proposition he afterward defended against Sepulveda, who,
in 1550, had upheld the right of conquering the heathen with
an extravagance which caused his book to be excluded from
Spain by the sagacious Charles V. A similar censure is said
to have prevented the publication before 1554 of that indig-
nant rebuke of Spanish cruelty, the Destruction of the Indies,
which had been written by Las Casas a dozen years earlier.
His most elaborate work, the History of the Indies, which is
still unpublished, contains a frank confession of regret that
his sympathy with the horribly oppressed Indians had led him
to approve of the request, already urged by other Spaniards,
that slaves might be brought from Africa.

So unwilling was this century to listen to new views, even
of practical matters of the utmost importance, that a Parisian
lawyer, named Spifame, was prohibited from practicing his
profession because in 1551 he published his Royal Decisions,
wherein he recommends beginning the year with January in-
stead of Easter, turning most of the church-bells into coin or
cannon, forcing bishops to reside among their flocks, putting
copies of every new publication in the royal library, passing
sanitary laws, establishing soldiers' homes, free concerts, and
respectable pawnbroker's shops, and taxing the nobility and
clergy as well as the common people. Adoption of this last
suggestion might have averted the French Revolution.

One great obstacle to progress in the sixteenth century was
the failure of either the Renaissance or the Reformation to
do more than substitute the authority of ancient for medieval
literature. The Bible was thought infallible in religion, Aris-
totle in philosophy, Galen in medicine, Ptolemy in astronomy,
and Justinian in legislation. Every path to greater knowl-
edge was blocked up by some old book. Mysticism was trying
to pull down some of these idols, though only to set up
others. What the age most needed was to see that facts are
more instructive than books.

First to show the advantage of direct obseryation over
mere reading were the physicians. Among the most famous
innovators of the century is Paracelsus, the Luther of medi-
cine. In ascribing all diseases to natural causes instead of

348 THE REFORMATION. [1525

supernatural, be was probably a follower of Hippocrates, on
wbora be wrote a commentary. His own babits of tbougbt
were so independent, bowever, tbat in the latter part of bis
life be read no books, and never entered a church. He used
to say, " He who will explore Nature must trample on books."
"She must be studied by traveling from land to land."
" Where we find a country, there we find a leaf." " Who
shall teach us the power of natural things, they who write of
it but have not proved it, or they who have proved it but
written nothing ?" Year after year be traveled over Europe,
even as far as Moscow and Constantinople, gathering all he
could from hunters, fishermen and miners. At thirty-two he
returned to Germany, and opened his lectures as pro-
fessor at Basel, in 1525, by publicly burning the books
of Galen, Avicenna, and other Greek and Arab physicians,,
all of whom, he declared, knew less than his shoe-buckles.
This love of independence is powerfully shown in Robert
Browning's tragedy, which probably ascribes to Paracelsus
rather too high aims, and much too deep regrets at his own,
short-comings.

It is not unlikely that he really held that :

" Truth is within ourselves ; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe :
There is an inmost center in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness."

In his struggles to keep free from all established systems,
he fell, perhaps unconsciously, into Neo-Platonism. And thus
he was led to disregard anatomy, as well as what had already
been ascertained concerning the properties of drugs, and to
rely mainly on new remedies which he thought corresponded
mysteriously to the essence of the disease, or the relations of
various parts of the body to the sun, moon, and planets. This
theory led him to pay much attention to chemistry, by whose
aid he discovered some specifics of great value, for instance,
antimony and laudanum. With these he performed some mar-
velous cures, for one of which he asked so high a fee as led
to his dismissal ; though this, as well as the poverty in which
he died, were in great measure due to his habitual drunken-

1543] PEACT1CAL REFORMERS. 349

ness. Greater regard for the experience of his predecessors
might have made him more virtuous and successful, but it was
difficult to rebel against the tyranny of tradition without go-
ing to the opposite extreme. There could be no progress in
medicine or any other field of thought, until the infallibility
of all books had been denied boldly and plainly. Rightly, is
he portrayed by Browning, as seeing the shades of the ancient
physicians gather to mock him around the bed where he dies
in shame and misery, and as exclaiming :

" That yellow blear-eyed wretch-in-chief,
To whom the rest cringe low with feigned respect —
Galen, of Pergamos and Hell ; nay speak
The tale, old man ! We met there face to face :
I said the crown should fall from thee : once more
We meet as in that ghastly vestibule :
Look to my brow ! Have I redeemed my pledge ?"

More weighty opposition to Galen was made by Vesalius,
who began to study anatomy when he could get no subjects,
except by fighting for them against savage dogs or stealing
them from grave-yards and gibbets, whereupon he had to
hide them in his own bed. One of these thefts drove him
forth as an exile from his birth-place, Louvain ; but at twenty-
two a professorship was founded for him at Padua, and others
#t Bologna and Pisa. He had also a lucrative practice in
Venice where the worst criminals were placed by the state at
his disposal. Thus he gathered materials for a book on the
Fabric of the Haman Body, remarkable for costly illustrations,
copious and novel information, and vigorous attacks on Galen,
who was charged with giving as descriptions of the structure
of men and women, what are merely inferences from what he
knew of that of monkeys and quadrupeds. This daring book
appeared in 1543, and brought down upon Vesalius, then but
twenty-eight, the wrath of all the old doctors. He held pub-
lic dissections to prove that he was right and Galen wrong,
but the prejudice against him was so blind and fierce, that at
last he burned his unpublished writings, including many origi-
nal notes on the effects of drugs, and confined himself for the
last ten years of his life to practicing at Madrid. There, he

350 THE REFORMATION. [1543

fell into the clutches of the inquisition, apparently because
the heart of a patient, on whom he was making a, post-mortem
examination, seemed to beat, and was sentenced to a pilgrim-
age, during which he died from ship-wreck, at the age of
fifty.

With the publication of this work, in 1543, may be said to
have begun the great conflict between fact and tradition, for
this is also the year in which appeared the De Revolutionibus
Orbium Ccelestium, written a dozen years before, by Coper-
nicus, who prudently waited until his last days before an-
nouncing the motion of the earth around the sun, and thus
striking a deadly though probably unintentional blow, at all
theories of a local heaven above our heads, or of the ascent
of Jesus thither, or of his incarnation for the exclusive bene-
fit of the inhabitants of this single planet. Showing the earth's
dependence on the sun was to lead eventually to establish-
ing her independence of heaven. The first result was proving
Ptolemy, the Bible, and ancient literature generally, to be so
much in error as to have no just claim to infallibility.

This memorable year was also that in which Ramus pub-
lished his Censures on Aristotle, as well as his own Method of
Logic, which eventually took the place of that by the most
idolized of all philosophers. He had attacked this mighty au-
thority in a public discussion at Paris as early as 1536 ; but
his books subjected him to a trial there, which ended in their
suppression and his condemnation to silence, on March 1,
1544, when he narrowly escaped the galleys. His books were
burned, but often reprinted, and his lectures at Paris, where he
became professor in 1551, were attended by two thousand
hearers. His position was made insecure by his embracing
Protestantism, in 1561, and his attempts to establish himself
in Germany were frustrated by the devotion of the Lutherans
to Aristotle, shortly after which failure he fell a victim in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Vives, a friend of Erasmus, had published a book in 1531,
showing that the true disciples of Aristotle must investigate
facts afresh, as he had done. Similar ground was taken by
Cardan, an Italian physician, who, five years later, exposed

1545] PRACTICAL REFORMERS. 351

the malpractice then inveterate among his brethren ; and,
who, after much petty persecution, succeeded in becoming
the founder of algebra in 1545, as well as in doing much
to inaugurate scientific methods of thought by his De Sub-
tUitate Rerum and De Varietate Rerum, which appeared re-
spectively in 1551 and 1552, and represent the world as the
result of natural forces, acting according to fixed laws.
Some dim ideas of spontaneous variation and natural selec-
tion have been found in these books, whose author said : " He
who insists that every thing comes into existence merely
because such is God's pleasure, dishonors Him, by making
Him act unreasonably."

Popular rights found their earliest modern advocate in La
Boetie who, at the age of eighteen, was provoked by the
massacre in Bordeaux by command of her king, 1548, to
expose the danger of " subjection to a master of whose good-
ness we can never be sure, because it is always in his power
to act wickedly." The power of tyrants is shown to rest on
the apathy of the people. " Resolve to serve no more and you
are free," exclaims the Involuntary Servitude, which was
promptly circulated in MS., though not printed before 1576.
Knox, when he published his First Blast of the Trumpet
against the Bloody Mary, in 1558, promised to let his second
blast — unfortunately never blown — show that kings can have
no right to reign, except from the choice of the people, who
may "most justly depose and punish him that unadvisedly
they did elect." Another fugitive from Britain, Bishop Poy-
net, printed that same year a book in favor of regicide, said
to have been burned at Geneva. A year later Aylmer, then
a refugee, but afterward a bishop, admitted in his answer to
Knox, that English monarchs have not the right to make laws.
Alciati, who had previously fled from Italy to England, began
an important innovation by showing the worthlessness of the
confessions drawn by torture from alleged witches. He also
went so far beyond his age as to recommend that astrologers
should be punished as cheats. Bolder reforms in law were
soon to be inaugurated ; and the opposition to tradition was
already beginning to spread into every field.

352 THE INFORMATION. [1545

v.

Another band of servants of mental progress held little
more than a nominal allegiance toward the Church of Rome,
but offered their real homage to the Muses. Their hostility
to religion seems to have been much overrated, as especially
was that of their leader, Rabelais. So skillful, eager, and
successful had the hunters after heresy and unbelief become
before the middle of the sixteenth century, that no one whose
writings and conversation were so grossly irreverent, as are
often said to have been those of the author of Gargantua
and Pantagruel, would have been suffered to die in peace, or
€ven to rest in his grave. That he was imprisoned in 1523 by
the Franciscans, whom he had joined, is ascribed by his
learned contemporary, Budseus, to his having secretly studied
Greek, then called the language of heresy. Bacon had been
kept in confinement for twenty-four years on no worse charge
by these haters of knowledge. So innocent in reality was
Rabelais, that neither he nor the friendly magistrate who
broke open his cell, underwent any censure from the pope,
who first transferred the young student to the erudite Bene-
dictines, and finally suffered him to cease entirely to be a
monk, and become not only a parish priest but a physician.
Such a powerful preacher and faithful pastor, as he was at
Meudon near Paris until he resigned his charge, when nearly
seventy, is scarcely to be reckoned among the enemies of re-
ligion and morality. Nor should we give implicit faith to
such stories as that, after receiving extreme unction, he said :
" I have greased my boots for a long journey," or that he
-told a visitor who asked how he was, " I am going to seek the
Great Perhaps."

There can be no question of his right to a place beside
Aristophanes, Lucian, Shakespeare, Swift, and Voltaire. His
genius, like theirs, has been much obscured by his filth, but he
has the excuse that it was needed to make his work palatable
to his sovereigns. The first and second books appeared in
1535 and 1533, their order having been soon reversed, and
are a strange mixture of fanciful tales, borrowed from old

1545] RABELAIS AND OTHER NOMINAL CATHOLICS. 353

romances, with daring protests against servility, intolerance,
and superstition. High above the smoke of burning heretics
and embattled bigots rises the prayer of Pantagruel, " Thou
art Almighty, and thou hast no need of us to defend thy cause."
Especially remarkable is the presentation of a far
better system of education than had yet been known, or
is even now in general use. The old philosophers had
relied too exclusively on practice in logic, which had
been supplemented in the medieval schools, by such
restriction of knowledge to what could be learned from
books, and such compulsion to perform irrational ceremonies,
as seriously checked the development of originality. Rabelais's
young prince goes through year after year of this routine
without gaining any real knowledge or ability ; but he makes
rapid progress under a system which is briefly this. He rises
very early, hears the Bible read aloud ; talks with his tutor,
while going through the elaborate toilet then customary, over
-what they have done the day before ; follows up three hours
of study with as many of athletic exercise ; converses during
dinner about the origin and properties of various kinds of
food, and the opinions on this subject of classic authors ; then
plays at arithmetical games, or on musical instruments ;
spends three hours more with books and as many in the sad-
dle, or else in bathing, or botanizing ; amuses himself after
supper in the same way as after dinner, or in visits to travel-
ers ; and gives his last thoughts to meditating on the revela-
tions of God's glory in his works. In stormy weather the
hours of recreation are spent in learning to use tools, and vis-
iting all sorts of workshops and places of business. The king
bids his son study, not only Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and
Arabic, but also astronomy, though not astrology, and says :
" To knowing the facts of nature I would have you devote
yourself diligently, so that there shall be no sea, river, or spring
of which you can not tell the fish ; as for the birds of the air,
the trees and bushes in the woods, all the plants on earth, all
the metals under it, the gems of the east and south, let noth-
ing of this kind be unknown to thee; read and re-read the
Greek, Arab, Hebrew, and Latin physicians, and dissect fre-

354 THE REFORMATION. [1543

quently, so as to have perfect knowledge of that other world,
man." That mind and body should be developed together had
already been urged by the Greek philosophers, but Rabelais
was the first writer except Roger Bacon to show the advant-
age of studying things directly, and not merely reading
about them in books.

Still more original and anti-ecclesiastical is the description
of the Abbey of Will or Thelema. This richly endowed in-
stitution has no walls, bells, or statutes, the only rule being,
" do what you please." " Fais ce que vouldras." Boys of
good station and character enter a*t twelve, as girls do at ten,
and stay as long as they please, subject to no restraint in their
intercourse except their own honor, on which Rabelais is so
much wiser than his age as to rely confidently There is no
public worship, and no interference with private devotion.
Social amusements and solitary studies are encouraged, as is
early marriage.

The third book, which came out in 1545, would have been
suppressed by the monks, if it had not been for the favor
shown by Francis I. to the author, who left the kingdom
two years later in alarm at the surreptitious publication of
book fourth. Here Rabelais sends his prince traveling past
various islands, on one of which the keepers of Lent appear as
ferocious monsters, waging perpetual war with their Protest-
ant neighbors who have the shape of sausages ; another is
consecrated to Hypocrisy, and peopled by male and female
sayers of pater-nosters with their children ; and a third is that
of the Papomaniacs who ask the travelers, " have you seen
him ? " " The only one ? " " The God on earth ? " At last
they realize that the pope is meant, and Panurge, the jester
of the party, says, " Oh yes, I have seen three, and no good
did it do me." lie has to explain that he means three succes-
sively, and then they are treated with almost divine honors,
and sumptuously feasted by the bishop, who has a house full
of pretty girls, and who keeps drinking in honor of the
seraphic and angelic decretals, boasting that there are no
books which bring in so much money to the owner, denounc-
ing fire and sword against the enemies of the pope, whom he

1543] RABELAIS AND OTHER NOMINAL CATHOLICS. 355

calls our decretal God, and exclaiming, " Ob, how will reading
but a single passage in the canons and decretals inflame your
hearts with love to God, and your neighbor, provided he is
not a heretic ! " The Protestants are made as ridiculous as
the Papists, which must have been one reason that this book
was finally published with the royal permission in 1551, two
years before the author's death.

Not before 1562, did any one dare to print the fifth and
boldest book. This opens at the "Ringing Island," full of
birds who look like men and women, but are kept in cages-
where they do nothing but eat, except that they sing when-
ever the bells ring that hang above their heads. Their names-
are derived from those of pope, cardinal, bishop, and abbot,
and there are both males and females of each variety. Of
course there is but one male among the " Pope birds," but he
has several females. Many of these birds come from the coun-
tries of " No Bread " and " Too Many of that Sort," and some
have flown away from places where they would have been
punished for crime. The most greedy and impure are marked
with the white cross of the Knights of St. John, or the red,
green, or blue ones of other orders. All would be perfectly
happy if they were not pestered by fish- eating harpies, whose
color is that of the mendicant friars. Near this gay island
is the gloomy one of the "Furred Cats of the Law,"
whose paws are always bloody, whose deathly work is blamed
by no one but heretics, and whose tutelar deity carries the
sickle of injustice, and a balance with purses instead of
scales. Brighter again is the kingdom of Queen Quintes-
sence, who feeds on abstractions, categories, and antitheses,
and who professes to heal all diseases with her songs, while
her officials keep at work washing blackamoors white, plow-
ing with foxes, shearing asses, gathering figs from thistles,
milking he-goats into sieves, and cutting fire with knives.
Another island, that of the Sandals, is peopled by monks
whose fondness for women is as excessive as their hatred of
heretics. One of the visitors speaks of the harm done both
to health and to morals by keeping Lent, and Panurge asks :
" Is this speaker heretical ? " " Very." " Would he be burned

356 THE REFORMATION. [1543

justly?" "Justly." "And in what way?" "Alive."
Close by is an island full of hydras, unicorns, centaurs and
phoenixes, near whom dwells a little old man named Hearsay,
who has seven tongues, each in seven parts, and all chatter-
ing constantly, and as many ears as Argus had eyes, but is as
blind as a mole. At last they come to the " Island of Lan-
terns," or reign of light and truth, and the work closes with
an exhortation to drink freely of the new wine, and seek
boldly underground for treasures of wisdom.

This advice refers less to the study of classic philosophy,
in my opinion, than to that of natural science, but the point
can not be determined with certainty, and it is not unlikely
that both are recommended here, as in the letter already
quoted. It is a great pity that Rabelais did not find it safe
to state what he really believed in, as plainly as he shows his
independence of traditions and formalities, and his hatred of
all tyranny, bigotry, and superstition. Perhaps his disgust
at the hypocrisy of the Church in forbidding her servants to
marry, while she knew that she was thus driving them by the
thousand into concubinage, may have done much to provoke
a coarseness of language, to which he was also driven by the
necessity of pleasing the kings and bishops whose permission
was necessary for the circulation of his book. Whenever he
ventures to speak seriously, it is in favor of pure religion,
sound knowledge, and high morality ; and if he had tried to
say more in this strain, his words might not have been suf-
fered to come down to us.

No one else whose methods were so purely literary did
such good service at this time to the cause of liberty. Ariosto
and Machiavelli belong to an earlier period. The former's
satires and comedies, exposing clerical corruption, did not in-
crease the fame already won by that masterpiece in which
the amorous and martial spirit of medieval chivalry still lives,
with nothing of its superstition ; but the History of Florence,
on which Machiavelli was laboring at his death in 1527, did
much to expose the falsity of the alleged " Donation of Con-
stantino," on which the popes rested their claims to temporal
power, as well as to show their guilt in calling foreigners into

1543] RABELAIS AND OTHER NOMINAL CATHOLICS. 357

Italy and keeping her disunited, while acting so treacherously
that no prince could afford to trust them. Another great
historian, Guicciardini, was more fully contemporary with
Rabelais, and like him so far emancipated from what was
then called Christianity as to declare human nature funda-
mentally virtuous, from which position he deduced the still
more daring one, that it depended on a man's natural dispo-
sition whether his faith made him better or worse.

With these famous names might have ranked that of Berni,
if all the boldest passages of his Orlando had not been sur-
reptitiously destroyed after his death by two personal ene-
mies, one of whom, Aretino, cared nothing for either religion
or morality, and took the side of the Church only to gratify
his malice. Some of the omitted stanzas are still preserved ;
and among them is one, saying that it is as likely that the
pope and prelates will reform the Church, as that blood should
come from a turnip, or that vinegar should become sweet.
Similar ground was openly taken by many Italians of lesa
note, for instance, Folengo, whose heroine, Berta, says she
will not pray to the saints, nor confess to friars who are
thinking only of how to seduce her ; Manzolli, or Palinge-
nius, author of the Zodiac of Life, Frezzi, Alamanni, Kegri,
Trissino, who was obliged to suppress promptly whatever
was anti-clerical in his Italia Liberata, and Gryphius, who
went to the scaffold about 1552, for calling the inquisition
a dagger drawn against all authors.

Among French authors less brilliant than Rabelais, and
perhaps, on this account, more severely persecuted, should
here be -mentioned Desperriers, Dolet, and Marot. It is hard
to see why the first-named should have had his Cymbal of
the World suppressed with a severity which caused it to be
wholly unknown until a solitary copy was found in the
last century, and which drove the author to kill himself,.
in 1544, rather than be forced by the rack to betray his friends,,
among whom was Queen Margaret of Navarre. Possibly the
pope is meant by Mercury in the dialogue telling how he was-
robbed of the Holy J3ook which the gods wished to keep to
themselves. Anagrams of the names of Luther, Bucer, and

358 THE REFORMATION. [1543

Erasmus, also called Girard, may be detected in the scene
where Rhetulus, Cubercus, and Trarig quarrel about the value
of the little fragments into which the philosopher's stone has
been broken, in orMer to keep man in ignorance. The dia-
logue, which concludes the little book, brings in the dogs of
Actaeon, who have become able to talk by eating the tongue
of their master, a capacity which one advises the other to
conceal, lest they should be whipped and not fed. Little is
known of his real views, or of those of Dolet, who was burned
after having been strangled, on his thirty-eighth birthday,
August 3, 1546, only his reluctantly invoking the Virgin and
his namesake, Stephen the first martyr, having saved him from
being burned alive. This execution, as well as the suicide
just mentioned, were among the results of a system which
on January 13, 1535, actually made it a capital crime to print
or sell any book in France. This prohibition was soon relaxed,
but not so far as to prevent the publication without license of
translations of the Scriptures and the attempt to sell
Calvin's Institutes and the Commonplaces of Melanchthon from
being among the offenses urged against Dolet, who was also
charged with eating meat in Lent, staying away from church,
and altering a passage in the Axiochus, then attributed to
Plato, so that a statement of cessation of earthly life in these
words, " Thou shalt be no more," was made to read, " Thou
shalt be nothing at all." His having studied at Padua may
have increased the suspicion that he rejected immortality, but
his writings show some faith therein,-»as well as in the exist-
ence of God. His boldest words are those which caused his
brief imprisonment at Toulouse in 1534, and which not only
charged this city with not having acquired even the rudiments
of Christianity and being given over to superstitions worthy
only of the Turks, but plainly say that the persecution of here-
tics is opposed to all semblance of humanity and utterly con-
trary to justice. The charge of atheism made by Calvin, Cas-
talio, and many others of Dolet's contemporaries is scarcely
to be reconciled with the risk he took in order to circulate
religious books ; but it is difficult to determine whether he
really had much respect for Christianity.

1543] EABELAIS AND OTHER NOMINAL CATHOLICS. 359

Among the friends of Dolet, Desperriers, and Rabelais was
Clement Marot, page to Queen Margaret, who took him more
than once out of the confinement in which he was put for eat-
ing meat in Lent and writing satires against the persecutors,
especially that pillar of the Church, Diana of Poitiers, mistress
of two royal devotees. The freedom of Marot's pen obliged
him to put himself under the protection, first, of the duchess
of Ferrara, and then of the republic of Venice. On returning
to France in 1536, he wrote his Balladin, telling how Chris-
tine, the good shepherdess, ever kind, pure and young, and
the best of singers and dancers, because she puts her heart
in all she does, was driven away by the painted and wrinkled
Simone, who dances falsely and cares nothing for the songs
she chants, and how, after a thousand years of persecution and
exile, light from heaven pierced the darkness, and Chris-
tine has left her retreat in Saxony and come back to France.
It was not so much this comparison of true and false Chris-
tianity as a translation of the Psalms, musical enough to please
King Francis and accurate enough to satisfy John Calvin, that
called forth a storm before which Marot fled to Geneva.
There, however, he found such different views from his own
that he went to Turin, where he died the next year, 1544.

Gringoire wrote much after 1522 in behalf of the Church
he had formerly derided on the stage, but other authors still
found there a freedom of speech which could be enjoyed no-
where else in France. It was in the midst of auto dafes and
on the brink of a religious war, that Jodelle, creator of the
French comedy, exposed clerical corruption before the king
and court in his Eugbne, first acted in 1552. Of much earlier
date and style is the farce of the Tlieolog aster, a personifica-
tion of the Sorbonne, who pours his lament — that men study
Greek, the language of heresy, instead of scholasticism — into the
ear of Monasticism,who answers by complaining that his table
is no longer supplied sumptuously. Both try in vain to cure Faith
of a Sorbonical colic, but she refuses their sermons and de-
cretals and keeps calling for Holy Writ, who at last enters as
a decrepit old man, his face so bloody that he is not recog-
nized until cleansed and invigorated by his daughter Reason.

360 THE REFORMATION. [1543

After denouncing the intolerance with which Erasmus and
Melanchthon are treated, Holy Writ heals Faith with a kiss,
and she in return salutes Reason as her sister, a denouement
evidently belonging only to the beginning of the Reformation,
whose later spirit would have been better shown by making
Holy Writ lay the stick on which he has been leaning across
Reason's shoulders, and adopt Faith as his daughter in her
place.

But the dramatist most worthy of mention here is Sir David
Lyndsay, justly celebrated in Marmion for —

" The flash of that satiric rage
Which, bursting on the early stage,
Branded the vices of the age,
And broke the keys of Rome."

His most artistic poem, the Dreme, shows popes and
bishops lamenting in hell that they had been given temporal
power by Constantine, who, according to the Complaynt of
the Papingo, or Parrot, had divorced Prelacy from Poverty,
the mother of Chastity and Devotion, and married him to
Lady Property, whose daughter is Sensuality. The last-
named is prominent in the Lion King's great drama of the
Three Estates, which was acted in the vernacular before the
king, clergy, nobles and citizens of Linlithgow in 1540, and
often afterward, all day being occupied in the performance,
and which may still be read with interest, despite its coarse-
ness. The first event is the conquest by Sensuality of the
young King, who is told that he is only following the example
of all the bishops. Popes, too, are said by the lady to be
among her subjects. Vainly does Chastity complain that she
has had no home since the pope became king, and ask hospi-
tality of Bishop, Abbot and Prioress. They put her in the
stocks in company with Dame Verity, whom they call a
Lutheran, and whom Flattery, in the frock of a friar, addresses
thus :

"What book is that, thou harlot, in thy hand?
Out, walloway, this is the New Testament,
In English tongue and printed in England.
Heresy ! Heresy ! Fire ! Fire incontinent ! "

1543] RABELAIS AND OTHER NOMINAL CATHOLICS. 361

The sisters are soon rescued by Correction, or Reformation,,
who tells the King, he will lose his crown if he does not send
away Sensuality ; so that she has to put herself under the
protection of the Clergy. Then Poor Man complains of his
pastor's extortions and gets into a fight with Indulgence-ped-
dler, who swears at the New Testament for teaching laymen
so much truth that there is no more money to be made out of
them. At last the three estates of the realm, Clergy, Nobility,
and Bourgeoisie, meet in Parliament around the King. John
the Commonweal, complains that the Church is governed by
Avarice and Sensuality, and both are put in the stocks by
Correction. The popular voice also secures the banishment of
the great fat friars, who do no work, either religious or manual,
but yet live like well-fed hogs. Prioress is discovered to be
a harlot in disguise. Bishop and Parson are accused of keep-
ing mistresses and neglecting to preach. They confess their
guilt and lose their land. John the Commonweal takes the
place of Clergy in Parliament as one of the three estates.
Laws are then passed enabling tenants to become freeholders,,
confiscating the property of the wanton nuns in order to estab-
lish new courts of justice, permitting all clergymen to marry,,
and providing that no benefices be held by men who can not
preach, and that no more money be sent to Rome.

That Lyndsay did not embrace Protestantism may be due
only to its slight hold on Scotland at the time of his death,
1555. And not until six or seven years later was this step
taken by George Buchanan, who had been imprisoned in 1539,
on account of a satire against the Franciscans, written at the
request of James V. He soon escaped to France, where he
wrote several dramas, one of which, the JBaptistet, shows that
Savonarola and Luther were the true successors of John the
Baptist, and makes Gamaliel say, " In our order cruelty is un-
becoming," and " It is tyranny to oppress a holy man whom
you can not convince by reason." Herod, too, tells the Daughter
of Herodias that " The law puts a limit to the commands of
kings." Among the youths who acted in those dramas was
Montaigne. In 1547 Buchanan became Professor of Latin in
Portugal, where he was imprisoned for nearly two years in a

362 THE REFORMATION. [1543

monastery on account of the Franciscan, which, however, was
not published until 1564.

VI.

Still another list may be made of men and women who
called themselves Protestants, but did not let themselves be
bound in Lutheran, Calvinistic, or Anglican fetters. If Hutten
had not died at the age of thirty-five, in 1523, it would soon
have become plain that he cared little for the Bible or justifi-
cation by faith, and hated the papacy mainly because it was
the worst enemy of free thought. Scarcely had the great
Theses appeared when he re-published Valla's attack on the
legitimacy of the temporal power, and dedicated the book to
Leo X. His fortune depended on the favor of the archbishop
of Mainz, but he made up his mind to sacrifice every thing to
the cause of liberty, and he took for his motto, " The die is
cast." To the pope's bull against Luther, in 1520, he replied
by a number of poems and dialogues in both German and
Latin, showing the injustice of this sentence, as well as the
profligacy, rapacity and tyranny of the Roman clergy, and
calling on Germany to break the papal yoke. One of the
earliest of these pieces is the Roman Triads, where he says :
" Of three things Rome has plenty, priests, scribes and har-
lots." " Three things every Roman loves, short masses, old
gold, and sensuality." " Three things are for sale in Rome,
Christ, benefices and women." His poem on the burning of
Luther's books runs somewhat thus :

" Here is indulgence given to any
Sinner who has the needed penny ;
Here are falsehoods freely told ;
Pardon for sin in advance is sold ;
Here the friends of truth are sent to hell ;
And God himself they try to sell."

A dialogue of great vigor brings forward Hutten as the
slayer of the Bull which is attacking German Liberty.

He had been excommunicated, and obliged to take refuge
with Sickingen, whose castles were open to all the persecuted,

1543] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 363

before the Diet of Worms, where the two knights are said to
have been the authors of a placard, posted up in the streets,
arid warning Luther's enemies not to touch a hair of his head,
for an army was ready to take the field in his defense.

At the same time Hutten tried to set the emperor against
the pope. Failing in this, he and Sickingen did their utmost
to bring about an anti-Romish league of all the German
knights, burghers, and peasants, the co-operation of the last
being solicited in a dialogue called Neu I£arsthans. The
first step in carrying out this plan was Sickingen's expedi-
tion in the name of gospel liberty, against the archbishop of
Treves, in September, 1522. The attack was repulsed, many
of the confederates stood aloof, and the most warlike of the
Protestants, Philip of Hesse, helped conquer Sickingen, who
died in the ruin which cannon had made of his castle, May 7,
1523. Hutten had taken refuge at Basel, but Erasmus would
not see him, and the magistrates forced him to depart. Only
Zwingli was willing to lighten the load of poverty, sickness,
and mortification under which he sank on August 29, writing
satire to the last. Thus ended the hope in which he had said,
" The minds awake, the sciences bloom, it is a pleasure to
live."

In sheltering Hutten, the Zurich reformer showed a liberal-
ity which was also apparent in his rationalistic view of the
sacramental presence of Jesus, and which was largely due to
his education having been received from Erasmus and the old
philosophers, and not like Luther's, from the Mystics. Dean
Stanley liked to quote Zwingli's prophecy of " the meeting
in the presence of God of every blessed spirit, every holy
character, every faithful soul that has existed from the begin-
ning of the world even to its consummation." He was not
without guilt in the murder by drowning of Felix Mantz,
January 5, 1527, for looking at baptism as freely as he did
himself at the communion ; but his death in battle against
the papists, October 11, 1531, prevented him from taking a
decided position among the foes or friends of tolerance.

It was in the previous year that Campanus, for denying the
personality of the Holy Ghost, the equality of the Son to

3G4 THE REFORMATION. [1550

the Father, and. the inability of the truly converted to commit
sin, was imprisoned by the elector of Saxony, whom Me-
lanchthon advised to hang him. Luther was more merciful,
and the Unitarian, was suffered to return to Zurich where he
was again imprisoned by the Catholics. Others who at-
tempted to point out the unreasonableness of this dogma
were even more unfortunate. It may have been partly for
licentiousness, that Iletzer was beheaded at Constance in 1529r
but his worst offense was the view he expresses thus :

" Why ask how many are in me ?
I made the world, and I alone ;
I am but one, I am not three ;
Of persons nothing have I known."

There is no such stain on the name of James Bainham, who-
was racked in 1531, and burned early in 1532 at London, for
objecting to transubstantiation and the confessional, and as-
serting that " If a Turk, a Jew, or a Saracen, do trust in God,
and keep his law, he is a good Christian man." And it was
merely disbelief in the incarnation that provoked Protestants
to light the fire on May 2, 1550, for Joan Bocher, who had
said to her judges : " It is a good matter to consider your ig-
norance. It was not long since you burned Anne Ascue for a
piece of bread, and yet came yourselves soon after to believe
and profess the same doctrine for which you burned her. And
now, forsooth, you will needs burn me for a piece of flesh, and
in the end you will come to believe in this also, when you
have read the Scriptures, and understand them." Another
disciple of the Baptists, George van Paris, who came from
Holland to England, was burned for yet plainer opposition
to trinitarianism in 1531. Arians and Anabaptists were so>
numerous in England that a commission was appointed the
year previous, in order to search for them, and many were
forced to recant during this reign and the next. One of the
culprits in 1556, Robert King, was also charged with saying-
"That it is not lawful to put a man to death for conscience*
sake." Free-willers, or opponents of predestination, were also
put in prison by the Bloody Mary, who does not, however,,

1553] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 365

seem to have sent any of them, or of the Arians or Anabap-
tists, to the stake. Among the documents preserved bv
Strype, is that in which Archdeacon Philpot, who was burned
as a Protestant, 1555, justifies himself for spitting on one
of those " rank Anti-christs," " members of the devil," and
" enemies of God," who deny that " Jesus is the eternal Son
of God."

This last was also a prominent charge against Servetus,
whose unrivaled originality made him persecuted by both
Catholics and Protestants. He claimed to be self-taught, but
he was greatly under the influence of Erasmus, as well as of
the early Fathers, when, at the age of twenty-two, he sent out
his Errors About the Trinity, a book denying that the three
persons are more than three dispositions, a view condemned
in the third century as Sabellianism, asserting that the real
existence of the Son of God began at the birth of Jesus, and
warning all Christians, that morality does not follow neces-
sarily and spontaneously from faith, but needs special effort.
This book was published near Strasburg in 1531, and read by
Luther and other leading Protestants, but it found few ad-
herents except at Yicenza and Venice, which latter city was
noted for its tolerance. In Switzerland, where Servetus then
resided, his views were so much hated that he had to depart,
after publishing a second work, which closes thus : " It would
be easy to separate truth from error, if all were allowed to
speak in peace. May the Lord destroy all the tyrants of the'
Church. Amen."

From 1532 to 1553, he lived in various parts of France,
under the assumed name of Villeneuve, studying and prac-
ticing medicine with such ability that he discovered the cir-
culation of the blood through the lungs, and won the favor
of the archbishop of Vienne, where he resided after 1540. In
1543 he published a Latin Bible, with notes written on the
new theory, not yet fully adopted, that each passage must be
interpreted as what the author designed mainly for the bene-
fit of his own contemporaries, and that readers in later ages
have no right to take any text as addressed directly and ex-
clusively to themselves. It was a great step toward real

366 THE REFORMATION.

knowledge of the Bible, when Servetus showed that it was
David whose star was to come out of Jacob, and whose hands
and feet were said by the Psalmist to have been pierced with
wounds ; that it was Hezekiah who was born of a young
woman, as our critic correctly rendered it, and was named
Immanuel; and that it was some one who was trying to bring
back the Jews from Babylon, who was " despised and hated
of men." Only a secondary reference to Jesus was admitted
by Servetus, who may contest with Erasmus the title of
founder of biblical criticism. It was not in these notes, but
in those to an edition of Ptolemy, published in 1535, that the
young student had dared to say that Palestine is not fertile,
as is asserted in Deuteronomy and Joshua, but is inhospitable
and barren.

He grew more and more independent, as he met with those
revolutionary Mystics, the Anabaptists, and as he studied the
Neo-Platonists, who made him a Pantheist. So bold were the
letters which he sent to Calvin, that the latter wrote, on Feb-
ruary 7, 1546, to his friend Farel, that Servetus was thinking
of visiting Geneva, but that, " If he does come, and I have
any influence, I will never suffer him to depart alive." He
who wrote thus became so angry two years later, when Serve-
tus sent him a manuscript copy of his best known, least read,
and worst treated book, the Restoration of Christianity, that
he would never send it back, despite the entreaties of the
author.

The work, as printed in 1553, is a pantheistic commentary
on the opening verses of the Gospel of John, written in a
spirit of hostility to the principal rites and dogmas of both
the Protestants and the Catholics. It opens with a prayer,
that Christ would guide his servant's mind and pen to declare
worthily the glory of his divinity. Only as God contains all
things in himself is there a union between Him and Christ,
who is intermediate between God and man, but did not exist
personally before he was born of Mary. God, who was orig-
inally the Father only, has finally manifested himself as Son
and Holy Ghost, but most of the Trinitarians make three Gods
and worship a three-headed Cerberus. Faith in Christ saves

13o3] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 367

us by reconciling us to God, but there is no need of reconcil-
ing Him to us. That we are justified, does not depend on
His grace and election, but also on the merits of our own
deeds and lives. Jews and Pagans are able to practice such
virtue as will bring them to heaven. Good works are proper
and natural to man, who did not incur the fall of Adam.
Unbaptized infants are not lost. It is foolish to say that the
salvation of a baby depends on a man's choosing to have it
baptized. Infant baptism is an invention of the devil to pre-
vent the true baptism, that of adults. Predestination, Serve-
tus rejects utterly. A clear statement of that new truth, the
pulmonary circulation of the blood, is also continued in this
work, to which are appended some letters to Calvin and Me-
lanchthon, and an indignant denunciation of all the Romish
doctrines, especially trinitarianism and transubstantiation.

While preparing this book, Servetus had written to one of
Calvin's brother-ministers, " I am sure I shall die for this ;
but I do not falter in soul, for I would be a disciple like the
Master." Immediate danger he thought he had avoided by
sending out the book anonymously, and not giving the print-
er's name or residence. Before any copies could be sold, a
letter came to Lyons, near Vienne, from Geneva, inclosing
the opening pages, and telling the real as well as assumed
name of the author, who it was said ought to be burned alive.
It is probable that Calvin had some share in giving this in-
formation, and it is certain that it was he who, when Serve-
tus had been arrested, in consequence of the first communi-
cations and discharged for lack of evidence, sent to the Romish
inquisitor the private letters written him in confidence by the
Unitarian. This at once brought Servetus into prison, and
would have sent him speedily to the stake, if he had not es-
caped, owing, it is said, to the gratitude of the Vibailly for
the recovery of his little daughter from a dangerous illness.
Soon after this escape, which was on April 7, he was burned
in effigy, as were his books. He had reached Geneva, on his
way to Italy, and was about to leave the city, when he was
arrested, on Sunday, August 13, at the request of Calvin, who
always gloried in it. This was his first visit to the city, and

"368 THE REFORMATION. [1553

there is no evidence that he had been there more than a few
days, had then made any attempt to spread his views, or had
-ever done any thing which could give any one there a legal
or moral right to put him on trial.

Calvin took the lead in the prosecution, and drew up the
thirty-eight articles on which Servetus was examined August
14, ]5, 16 and 17. The chief charges were Sabellianism, Pan-
theism, the reference to Cerberus, disparagement of Calvin
and Melanchthon, denial of the pre-existence of Jesus, of the
efficacy of infant baptism, of the doom of unbaptized babies,
and of the liability of children under twenty to commit deadly
sin, irreverent treatment of Deuteronomy, Judges, and the Mes-
sianic prophecies, sedition in escaping from prison, and dis-
belief in immortality. The last accusation was utterly false.
Servetus tried to make light of the differences between him-
self and Calvin, but the latter worked as hard as he could to
magnify them, and wrote to Farel, that he hoped the sentence
would be capital, though burning alive seemed too cruel.
•Such was the law, as he knew, when he prosecuted Servetus
and preached against him, which he did the Sunday after the
arrest. He also tried to argue away the fact, stated by Serve-
tus, that Justin Martyr and other very early Fathers were not
Trinitarians. Then the city attorney brought forward a new
series of articles, charging the prisoner with immoral life,
seditious designs, and sympathy with Jews and Moslems ; but
these accusations had to be withdrawn. On the 22d Servetus
pleaded that heretics were never put to death until the Church
became corrupt, and that he had. done nothing worse than
present abstruse problems to the consideration of scholars ;
but these pleas were treated as insults to all Christians, and
his request, that he should either be set at liberty or else be
furnished with a legal adviser, was promptly rejected. A
heated discussion of the right of governments to put heretics
to death took place on September 1, between Calvin and Ser-
vetus, who that day refused the request of the Genevese
judges that he should give the inquisition at Vienne such
information as would enable it to confiscate all sums still due
him from his patients. A third set of articles, much rcsem-

1553] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 369

bling the first and written by Calvin's secretary, had already
been brought into court. The resolution to ask the opinion
of the magistrates and ministers of Bern, Basel, Zurich, and
Schaffhausen, caused Calvin to prepare a fourth list of arti-
cles, thirty-eight in number and all dealing with the pre-ex-
istence of Jesus, except five, one of which repeated the false
charge of disbelief in immortality. Servetus was allowed to
reply, but did so very hastily, quoting no texts, often speaking
obscurely, and frequently calling Calvin liar and ignoramus.
The fourteen ministers of Geneva signed a refutation equally
abusive, but much abler ; and this Servetus answered only by
scribbling such epithets, as persecutor, liar, and murderer, on
the margin and between the lines. He sent no letters to the
ministers in the four cities, but Calvin wrote to them indi-
vidually. Before the answers arrived, Servetus complained to
the judges of the hardships of his confinement, urged that
heretics could not be justly put to death, and demanded to
have Calvin banished for betraying him to the inquisition and
afterward bearing false witness against him. No attention
was paid to this petition, nor to the protests against sentencing
him to death which were made by Zebedee, pastor at Noyon,
as well as by Gribaldi, an Italian lawyer then visiting Geneva.
The magistrates and ministers of Basel, Bern, Schaffhausen,
and Zurich were found to favor capital punishment, and a
majority of the court of twenty-five magistrates voted, in
spite of the opposition of Perrin, the president, and a few
others, that Servetus be burned alive. At noon the next day,
Friday, October 27, 1553, he was tortured to death accord-
ingly, wearing a crown of straw and leaves covered with sul-
phur, and having the manuscripthe Jiad loaned to Calvin, as well
as a printed copy of his great book, hanging at his waist. Green
wood was used, and his sufferings lasted half an hour. To
the last he protested that Jesus was not the Eternal Son of
the Father. Much less effort was made to have him recant
than would have been made by Roman Catholics ; but he had
recently been visited by both Farel and Calvin, and the latter
had answered his request for forgiveness only by fiercely de-
nouncing his errors. The attempt of the famous persecutor

370 THE REFORMATION. [1554

to have his victim beheaded was useless, and he undoubtedly
knew from the beginning that conviction meant death at the
stake, as was required by the ancient law, then often enforced
against witches.

It is to be noticed that the plea of Servetus, that heretics
should not be put to death, was treated only as an aggravation
of his guilt. His execution was so generally approved of in
Switzerland, Germany, and England, that Protestantism was
now fully committed to intolerance. However the Church
might be divided otherwise, it was still firmly united in hos-
tility to freedom of thought.

Vainly had the guilt of persecution been brought to light
by More, Erasmus, Rabelais, Dolet, and Agrippa. What
Luther and Calvin had said in their early writings in favor of
tolerance was soon lost sight of even by themselves. But
the cruel murder of Servetus caused his protest against such
atrocities to win unexpected favor. His execution was
promptly and openly censured at Basel by people who detested
his theology. The Secretary of State at Bern, Zurkinden,
wrote, in 1554, to Calvin, advising that the sword should not
be used often against enemies of the faith, " because this has
always been found to make their partisans more extravagant,"
and also that he should not defend his treatment of Servetus,
for " you would have to support a proposition hateful to
every one who thinks." Calvin's disregard of this advice
called out the publication that year of a work showing, in
both French and Latin, what he himself in earlier years, as
well as other Reformers and many of the Fathers, had said
against persecution. " Who would be a Christian, when he
sees that those who confess Christ are murdered by other
Christians with fire and sword, and treated worse than by
robbers and murderers ? " says this book, which made a great
sensation. It bore the name of Martin Bellius, but is ascribed
to Sebastian Castalio, formerly a school-teacher at Geneva^
where he had showed rare ability, as well as a courage which
made him visit the sick during a pestilence which frightened
away the ministers. His opinion, that the Song of Solomon
is immoral, brought on a controversy with Calvin, and some

1554] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 371

charges which he made publicly against the Genevese clergy,
and which were fully justified five years later, when Freron
was deposed for adultery, were received so angrily that he
had to leave Geneva in 1544. During the rest of his life he
suffered much from poverty, but in 1552 he became professor
of Greek at Basel, where he published a Latin version of the
Bible, showing great originality. His powerful attack on
predestination appeared a few years later than the period
covered by this volume.

In 1554 was also published a dialogue, in which Vaticanus
asserts that if Christ were to come to Geneva, he would be
crucified afresh, or else burned alive by the new pope who
reigned there. This piece also had to appear without the
real name of the author, who is supposed to have been Bolsec,
formerly a French monk, but more recently a physician in
Geneva, whence he had been banished, on December 22, 1551,
for maintaining at a Friday conference, that Calvin's doctrine
of predestination made God a tyrant, and lessened the differ-
ence between virtue and vice, as well as for admitting during
his trial his belief, that faith does not depend on election,
that free-will was not lost in Adam's fall, that God calls all
men to salvation, and that He has not ordained that some
rather than others should be lost. No attention was paid to
a petition for his release by Jacques de Bourgogne, Lord of
Falais, who on November 9 pleaded, what had never before
been heard in Christendom, namely, that " Free speech ought
to be permitted to all Christians." It seems to have been the
intercession of Bern and Zurich which saved the life of Bol-
sec, who wrote a poem during his imprisonment, charging Cal-
vin with seeking his death, and who afterward revenged him-
self by writing the Life of his persecutor, with that of a
minor bigot, Beza.

Among the publications of 1554 were two other censures of
the murder of Servetus, one by Occhino, formerly a popular
preacher at Naples, but then a refugee for Protestantism, and
soon to be banished from Zurich for Unitarianism at the age
of 76, and the other a Latin poem by a fugitive from Sicily,
named Camillo Renato, who had been on trial in the Grisons

372 THE REFORMATION. [1555

for Sabellianism and denial of the resurrection of the body.
He now charged Calvin with an inexpiable crime, warned
him that though the man had perished, the opinion remained,
and advised him to spare men and destroy only error. Minos
Celso of Siena also wrote at that time with singular force as
well as moderation against capital punishment for heresy, but
his work was not printed until thirty years later. Similar opin-
ions were expressed by Lselius Socinus, uncle of the founder
of the Socinians, on his arrival at Geneva, as a fugitive from
Bologna in 1554. Strong ground in favor of tolerance was
also taken by Yergerio, formerly a bishop, and by Cellarius,
professor of theology at Basel, where the proposition was
under discussion by the clergy in 1555. That same year Fon-
celet was banished from Bern, for a French poem making out
Calvin worse than Caiaphas. Then, or even earlier, Lyncurt
of Spain wrote an apology for his compatriot. A dozen pro-
tests had now been made against persecution, which was
thenceforth indulged in more sparingly among Protestants.
Gribaldi was punished for his Unitarianism only by banish-
ment from Geneva in 1555, as he was two years later from
Bern, to which city he finally returned to die in prison.
Blandrata and Gentilis were exiled for the same offense in
1558 from Geneva, where Gentilis might have mounted the
scaffold if he had not recanted, bare-headed and bare-footed,
clad only in his shirt, and holding a lighted torch. Blandrata
soon made his way to Poland, where Unitarianism had been
taught before the accession, in 1548, of the tolerant King Sigis-
mund, under whom, eight years later, every nobleman who
admitted the authority of the Bible was granted the privilege
of worshiping as he pleased in his own house. The ^irst per-
secution was in 1564, when Occhino and Gentilis, who had
recently arrived, were driven forth, the former soon to die in
prison, and the latter to be beheaded two years later at Bern,
where he suffered with great courage. Such were the French,
Spanish, and Italian refugees who tried to liberalize Calvinism.
The liberal Protestants in Germany were mostly Mystics,
the only exception of importance being Thamer, pupil of
Luther, and chaplain in the Schmalkald war. There the sol-

1555] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 373

diers answered to his reproofs of their lewdness and drunken-
ness : "You tell us yourself that we must be justified
through the merits of Christ alone, that none of our acts can
possibly please God, and that good works avail nothing
toward salvation. Why then trouble us about morality ? "
This opened Thamer's eyes, and in 1547 he offered to main-
tain the saving efficacy of morality in a public discussion at
Marburg, where he was pastor and professor. The discus-
sion was prohibited, and his sermons to prove virtue indis-
pensable caused his banishment on August 15, 1549. The
archbishop of Mainz gave him a pulpit, which he soon lost by
placing conscience above the Bible. After many wanderings
he was driven into the Roman Catholic Church about 1557,
and died professor of theology at Freiburg.

Of the steadfast followers of the Inner Light the most
famous is Sebastian Franck, whose popularity as an author did
not prevent his passing the latter part of his life in poverty
and exile. He had to leave Nuremberg in 1531, on account
of his incorporating in his Universal History a laudatory
Chronicle of Heretics, which name he says has always been
given to those who have taught true wisdom. In the preface
to the whole work he exclaims : " God be thanked, I can
read every author without prejudice and am not so far gone
in any sect, that all pious men do not please me heartily,
though they err in unessentials." " Neither have I sworn by
any man's words, for I hold only to God, and under Him to
my own reason." " I reject no heretic, but separate the gold
from the dross." " There is scarcely a heathen or a heretic
who has not some good thoughts, wherein I find my God, who
lets his sun shine on the evil and the good, and pours out his-
blessing on them all."

No wonder that Luther called Franck the "Devil's Mouth,"
especially as he also said : " In each man a love of liberty is-
implanted by the free God." " There can be no sin against
Him, for we can injure only our fellow men." " We were
more at liberty to blame the vices of princes under the papacy
than we are at present." "Each sect treats all others as-
heretics, but God is no respecter of sects, and whoever does

374 THE REFORMATION. [1555

His will is acceptable in His sight." " The heathen were origi-
nally more tolerant to Christians than Christians are to
Christians at present." " Reason is the fountain of all the
rights of man." " God has no anger, but we, each of us, find
Him angry or friendly, according to what we think of Him,
just as for the blind the sunshine is darkness." "There is no
need to reconcile God to men, for He is all love." " Surely,
Jesus would not have had to come to us, if we had known
how free God is from wrath." " He has implanted His light
in every human soul, so that each man is able to know the
truth and judge between evil and good." " By this aid wrote
Job, Plato, Seneca, and Plotinus." " God is nature, and all
nature is in itself divine. He can do nothing contrary to
nature, for that would be to deny Himself." " There is no
definition of God." " We are not fallen so far as not to be
still divine. Each of us has good and evil principles in him,
and can choose which to follow." " We need love as well as
faith in order to be saved." " He who thinks ceremonies still
necessary for the people is no Christian, but only a Jew."
" Without the Inner Word the outer one is dead and barren,
and only a source of error." " We can not trust to any book,
not even Holy Writ, unless we have learned judgment from
God." " It is wrong to say, Israel carried on war and there-
fore it is right for us. On the contrary, we should say, Israel
waged war according to the old covenant, and therefore we,
who are in the new, should not." " We need something
higher than a Bible to reach to heaven." " God's Word is
eternal, but many books of Scripture have been lost."
" Surely they have not the Word and Wisdom who appeal to
the Bible for themselves, as a thousand sects do among
Christians, and as the Turk does to the Koran, the Jew to the
Talmud, and the Papist to the Decretals, while each man calls
the others heathens and heretics." " Let each one think that
others also can quote Scripture, and take no rest until he has
been taught of God." " If the Bible were necessary to salva-
tion, then would those children have been lost whom Jesus
blessed." "With the letter of Scripture have scribes
and Pharisees slain the prophets and apostles." " The

1555] SERVETUS AND OTHER LIBERAL PROTESTANTS. 375

letter is the sword of Anti-christ, wherewith he fights against
the saints."

We might say that we have not yet advanced much fur-
ther than this, but it must be remembered that such opinions
now make preachers popular in many sects, whereas Sebastian
Franck was driven from city to city, under a hatred greatly
increased by his declaring that he could not sign any creed,
even one written by himself, or take any name but that of
Christian. No serious attempt was made to suppress his
books, among which were a History of Germany, tracts
against war and drunkenness, collections of proverbs and
paradoxes, two mystical treatises entitled the Golden Ark and
the Book with Seven Seals, and translations of the Praise of
Folly, by Erasmus, as well as of the Vanity of Arts and
Sciences, by Cornelius Agrippa. All these works were printed
before 1540 and most of them passed through several editions.
!No one has done more to purify religion and morality in
Germany.

Many other Germans were also freed by faith in the Inner
Light from bondage to ceremony and dogma. The simplicity
of Protestant worship is largely owing to Carlstadt, who was
one of the first reformers to marry, and who lived in great
poverty after his banishment from his parish of Orlamtinde,
in 1524, at the instigation of Luther, on account of his
disbelief in the sacramental presence of Jesus. Special stress
was laid as early as 1524 on the immoral tendencies of the
doctrine of justification by faith alone, as well as on the duty
of taking brotherly love, rather than baptism by water, as the
true sign of Christianity, by Schwenckfeld, who w^ called
Stenckfeld by Luther, but who won many followers, owing
largely to a holiness of life, which even a Catholic cardinal
acknowledged. Bunderlin tried to reconcile the differences
among the followers of the Bible, by publishing in 1529 at
Strasburg a plea for the authority of the Inner Word. " This
it is that saves us, and the Bible can be only a guide to it."
<" No one can tell whether his neighbor has this Inner Word,
and therefore no one should blame another for lack of faith."
"" Our only duty toward those who differ with us is to teach

37G THE REFORMATION. [1555

them gently." " He errs who says it is only by his own faith
that men may be saved." " Wholly contrary to Christ is it
for Protestants who pleaded for freedom of conscience when
they were contending against Rome, to use the sword against
those who differ with them." "Even the heathen are God's
children, and what the Bible says of His wrath against them is
merely figurative." " Jesus is our Saviour in so far as he helps
us to love God." In 1530 this Mystic ventured to assert that
baptism and all other outward rites are unnecessary and about
to pass away. John Denck, who died of the plague at Basel
in 1528, had already made hundreds of converts there as well
as in Augsburg, Strasburg, and Worms, to his view, that all
methods of baptism and theories about the Lord's supper are
unimportant, and that neither trinitarianism nor endless mis-
ery is true, according to that highest of authorities, the Inner
Word. Apparently he was the first Universalist in modern
times, and he certainly had great learning and integrity, as
well as the grace, rare among religionists in that dogmatic cen-
tury, of admitting his own liability to error.

VII.

None of the people already mentioned in this chapter can
be positively asserted to have renounced Christianity, though
this religion had little hold either on the French or Italian
rationalists, especially Desperriers, Machiavelli and Guicciar-
dini, or on the Munster fanatics. Among the Anabaptist ex-
tremists was David Joris, who disowned the authority of
Jesus, Jhd claimed to have succeeded him as Christ David,
author of revelations which took the place of all that had been
known before, and set believersfree from all outward laws and
institutions, particularly marriage. His tongue was bored by
the Dutch in 1528, and soon after publishing his Wonder-
book, in 1542, he took refuge under an assumed name in Basel,
where he propagated his views by correspondence, and died
in peace in 1556. No sooner was his record known than his
books and bones were burned together by the city executioner,
May 13, 1559.

UNBELIEVERS IN CHRISTIANITY. 377

Similar views are ascribed to the Libertines, who, perhaps,
were successors of the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit,
and who are said to have appeared at Antwerp in 1525, to
have made four thousand converts in France, where they were
protected by Queen Margaret, and to have spread to Geneva,
where, however, it is probable that this name was applied by
Calvin to more rationalistic opponents.

One of these, Jacques Gruet, who had made himself obnox-
ious by wearing the same style of breeches that was in favor in
the tolerant city of Bern, was arrested on Monday, June 28,
1547, for putting into one of the principal pulpits at Geneva
an anonymous letter, threatening that the clergy would be
assassinated, and declaring that, " We will no longer endure
so many masters," an offense which he did not confess until
he had been put on the rack, with Calvin's full approval.
Gruet's books and private papers were examined, and he was
found to have written in the margin of a chapter on immor-
tality in Calvin's works, " All nonsense." Among his notes were
these : " Moses says much and proves nothing," and " All laws,
whether divine or human, were made by man's caprice." A
letter, which had not been sent, urged a friend to complain to
the king of France against Calvin, who was spoken of as a
great hypocrite that wished to be worshiped like a pope. A
draft of a petition to the Great Council contained this novel
proposition : " If a man chooses to spend his property freely,
other people ought not to interfere. If I wish to dance and
enjoy myself, what has justice to do with that? Nothing !
Too severe laws will only make trouble." Never before had
the punishment of conduct injuring only the agent been de-
nounced as wrong in principle. Among the questions at the
trial, and his answers, were these : " Does not he who says
that we ought not to watch over the honor of God, but only
to chastise such evil as is committed against men, show that
he despises God and has no religion ? " " He who says this
may possibly have religion and a conscience, and agree with
Scripture." " Are not the commandments of God more
credible than those of man, and do not all who break them
deserve punishment ? " "I know nothing about that.'*

378 THE REFORMATION.

Gruet protested that he did not really believe what he had
written about Moses and the origin of morality, that he did
not object to Calvin's doctrine of immortality, but only to his
reasoning, and that he recognized him as a preacher of truth,
though he thought ministers should confine themselves to ex-
pounding the Gospel, and not meddle with worldly affairs.
The only witness was a clergyman who had held a private
discussion with Gruet, commenced by the latter and running
thus : " Where is the prohibition of fornication ? " " It was
given to Moses." "How do you know that?" " By Holy
Scripture." "Was Moses present at the creation of the
world ? " " No." " Then, who said it to Moses ? "

This is all that was brought up against Gruet, and no blame
was ever cast upon his moral character. The indictment
charges him with blasphemy against God and Moses, in saying
that the latter proves nothing ; in making all laws spring from
human caprice ; and in maintaining that only offenses against
men ought to be punished, but not the violations of the divine
commandments. "Thus he evidently seeks to annul all di-
vinity ; such a crime is more execrable than any heresy that
has ever appeared ; and only a monster in human shape could
speak thus," urged the prosecutor who begged that Gruet
might be punished according to Deuteronomy, xviii., 20, which
directs that the false prophet shall die. The relatives of the
prisoner now presented a petition in which he confessed his
faults, implored mercy, and promised reformation. This
would probably have saved his life, if he had been in the
hands of the inquisition. Roman Catholic tribunals did not
put to death heretics who could be persuaded to recant, and
much pains was often taken, for instance with Huss and
Bruno. Calvin had shown not the slightest desire to have
Gruet turn from his ways and live. He had petitioned the
court, immediately after the arrest, to strike at all slanderers
of the ministers or magistrates, for the honor of God ; and
now we find him expressing regrets, in a private letter, that
the trial lasts so long, and the judges are so timid. On Sun-
day, July 25, 1547, however, they voted that Gruet had blas-
phemed against God, insulted His servants, and committed

1557] SUMMARY. 379

treason against the state. " Wherefore, having God and the
Holy Bible before our eyes, we, in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost, sentence you, Jacques Gruet, to
be carried to the place of execution, and there to have your
head cut from your shoulders, your body fastened to the gal-
lows, and your head nailed up in this place." And thus, on
the next day, perished as a criminal the first man who denied
the right of the state to punish conduct which injured no-
body, and was merely contrary to Scripture.

More than two years after Gruet's execution, some repairs
on his house brought to light a treatise in his hand-writing,
alleging that both Moses and Jesus were criminals, that the
latter was not born of a virgin, that his miracles were delu-
sions or deceptions, that he deserved to be put to death, and
that the Bible has no more truth in it than ^Esop's Fables.
Such at least is the account given of this book by John Cal-
vin, who falsely charged Servetus with disbelief in immortality.
He had this manuscript publicly burned before the former
home of its author on Friday, May 23, 1550. This book is
often referred to as a mitigation of the guilt of shedding
Gruet's blood, but no such sentiments were ascribed to him on
his trial. The real offense for which he was murdered was
disbelief in persecution.

That same year Bishop Hooper says, " England is afflicted
hy heresies. There are some who say that the soul of a man
is no better than the soul of a beast, and is mortal and perish-
able. There are some who dare in their conventicles not only
to deny that Christ is our Saviour, but to call that blessed
child a mischief-maker and a deceiver." These unbelievers
were possibly Baptists, for this sect is known to have had
great influence over Servetus, Denck, Hetzer, Joan of Kent,
and George van Paris. Two Anabaptists were banished from
Geneva in 1537 for denying immortality. The same doom
fell July 27, 1553, on a Frenchman who had said " There is no
devil or hell but ourselves," and " The Holy Scripture is not
paper and ink, but the human heart." Another was expelled
in 1557, with his children, because he thought nothing of the
Gospel, and both men were to be scourged if they returned.

380 THE REFORMATION. [1560

Conradin Bassen was beheaded at Basel in 1529 for denying
the divinity of Jesus, his miraculous birth, and the efficacy of
prayer. The same fate would have been suffered at Chur in
1540 by Tiziano, if he had not recanted his assertion that
Jesus is simply human and the Bible without authority. No
persecution seems to have fallen on Postel, a Parisian profes-
sor, who maintained the superiority of natural to supernatural
religion, and the need of a female Messiah, nor on Ludovici, a
Venetian poet, who in his Triumph of Charlemagne, published
1535, makes Nature say : "As for that part of you which is
called immortal, I do not make it ; nor do I know if God
makes it, or what it may be. This may be some good gift
which it did not please Him, when I made the body, to give to
that part of you which, after your death, is resolved into
Him."

These scattered instances, from Italy, Switzerland, England,
Holland, and France, show that there was more opposition to
Christianity in these countries than ever before, though not so
much as if the bigotry of the Protestant and Catholic clergy
had not kept on the alert.

VIII.

In this account of the forty-three years between Luther's
theses arid the general triumph of the Evangelical reformers,
less attention has been given to those great though narrow
men than to their more enlightened contemporaries. Of these
really liberal men and women we may make five classes.
Section III. was devoted to Erasmus, More, Agrippa, L'Hopi-
tal, Queen Margaret, Queen Juana,and other sincere but toler-
ant Roman Catholics, whose failure to reform the Church
from within goes far to prove all such attempts impossibilities.
The second group is much more heterogeneous, for it in-
cludes a great variety of practical reformers, of whom some,
like Miinzer, Florian Geyer, and Wendel Hippler, joined in a
concerted but fruitless effort to emancipate the German
peasantry ; while others, like Las Casas, Spifame, La Boetie,
and Poynet, made more peaceable opposition to political

1560] SUMMARY. 381

abuses, and still others labored single-handed and with great
success against different mental despots, Paracelsus arid Vesa-
lius attacking Galen, Ramus assailing Aristotle, and Copernicus
showing the falsity of the Ptolemaic theory, whose fall shook
all the systems of theology and philosophy hitherto revered.
Next come the rationalists whose Romanism was only nomi-
nal, and whose tendencies to Protestantism or unbelief
caused most of them to be persecuted. Here the great name is
that of Rabelais, who was unusually fond of science. It was
the influence of ancient philosophy apparently which ruled
Pomponatius, Machiavelli, Guiccinrdini, Berni, Folengo, Man-
zolli, Gryphius, Desperriers, Dolet, Marot, and Lyndsay.
The same tendency may be detected in many Protestants, like
ITutten, Zwingli, Buchanan, Castalio, and Servetus, as well as
assumed in Gribaldi, Bolsec, Occhino, Renato, Yergerio,
Socinus, Celso, Cellarius, Lyncurt, Blandrata, and Gentilis ;
but Mysticism preponderated with Franck, Carlstadt, Schwenck-
feld, Denck, Hetzer, Btinderlin, Hoffmann, Mantz, and
Menno, as well as, in all probability, Joan Bocher and George
van Paris. These two sets of liberal Protestants could not
easily be distinguished apart so clearly as to form two classes;
and no such division is necessary, for they all agreed closely
enough, in stopping short of utter unbelief, for us to study
them together. None of them can be called rationalists as
correctly as could be most of the members of the previous class.
And far beyond all these groups is that in which stand
Joris, Postel, Ludovici, Gruet, and Tiziano who were led
by either Mysticism or rationalism to give up the authority
of Christianity more completely than had ever been done before.
Gruet is our first martyr for the truth, that no one should be
punished criminally, except for injury to his fellow men.

Having thus studied each group of thinkers by itself, we
must next consider the chronological relationship of their lead-
ing members, and look at the Reformation as a drama in five
acts, as follows :

First comes that great deliverance from papal tyranny,
which gives a name and character to the whole period, but
which is substantially achieved between 1517 and 1522, when

382 THE REFORMATION. [1560

Luther, Erasmus, Hutten, Zwingli, Carlstadt, and the other
liberals are working together in perfect harmony against their
common enemy.

Early in 1522, Luther comes into conflict with other Mystics
who are destroying old institutions too rapidly, and thus
begins the second act of the drama, the strife of Lutherans
against revolutionists. Soon we see the most martial of the
Protestant princes, Philip of Hesse, in deadly warfare with
the knights-errant of the Reformation, Hutten and Sickengen.
Still more bloody are the battles of Lutheran despots against
Baptist rebels in 1525, a supplementary scene of the same
character being enacted ten years later in the horrors of
Minister. These thirteen years are also marked by bitter
controversies among the reformers. Erasmus keeps active to
the end in assailing the bigotry, superstition and immorality of
the Romanists, but does not neglect to censure the same
faults, as he sees them among Protestants. Thus he comes
into angry disputes with Hutten and Luther. The latter is
now destroying the unity and imperiling the very existence
of Protestantism by his intolerance against Carlstadt, Zwingli,
and every one else who thinks rationally about the sacraments.
Banishment from Protestant cities is incurred, not only by
Carlstadt for this liberality, but by Schwenckfeld for showing
the immoral tendencies of trusting to justification by faith
alone, by Servetus for criticising trinitarianism, by Franck for
asserting the right of heretics to tolerance, and by Paracelsus
for publicly burning the books of Galen, Avicenna, and other
medical authorities, which deed made him the first to show
that facts outrank traditions. The transitoriness of all re^-
gious institutions is declared by Bunderlin, while Protestant-
ism is gaining its name at Spire and its creed at Augsburg.
The first murders caused by its bigotry are those of Bassen at
Basel, and Mantz at Zurich. The Reformation has now se-
curely established itself in Germany, Switzerland, and the-
Scandinavian peninsulas, while its advocates are becoming nu-
merous in Holland, Belgium, France, Italy, and England.
Henry VIII. becomes head of the Church and carries on a
double persecution of both Catholics and Protestants, those

1560] SUMMARY. 383

liberal men on each side, More and Bainham, being among
his earliest victims. At this time takes place the first martial
victory of Protestantism over Romanism, the conquest of
Wiirteniburg by the Landgrave of Hesse.

The third act is a comparatively peaceful one, except for
the persecutions which continue in all Catholic lands, as well
as in England, but are as yet rare and slight among Protest-
ants. It extends from 153G to 1546, over the last ten years of
the life of Luther, who is now almost inactive, the leading
theologian of Protestantism being Calvin, while the politics
of the Reformation are controlled by the mighty Landgrave.
Now it is that Desperriers publishes his Cymbalum Jfundi, the
opposition to which drives him to suicide, and Servetus lays
the foundation of rational "criticism in those notes on the
Bible, soon to be numbered among capital offenses. Nothing
worse is yet done in Geneva, however, than to inflict fines,
exile, and imprisonment for unbelief, irreverent behavior, danc-
ing, and staying away from church, the two last offenses
being now made penal for the first time in Christian history.
Especially important are the simultaneous, but wholly inde-
pendent, attacks of Copernicus, Vesalius, and Ramus on^
Ptolemy, Galen, and Aristotle. Hitherto the battle against
tradition has been mainly carried on by rationalistic philoso-
phers and Mystics. Thenceforth, they have the mighty aid
of science.

From the burning of Anne Ascue in July, 1546, to that of
Servetus in 1553, is a reign of terror. Among the murdered
are also Dolet, Gruet, Joan Bocher, George van Paris, and
Gryphius, while Bolsec and Thamer are among the banished.
Most of these victims are treated all the worse, because they
and their friends plead t"he right of heretics to tolerance. La
Boetie protests vainly against the cruelty of despotism. The
half-way policy of Henry VIII. is superseded by a more Prot-
estant but not more tolerant administration. Rabelais and
Servetus finish their great works, one to be universally read,
even by the tyrants it ridicules, and the other to be suppressed
almost entirely.

The last seven years covered by this chapter form a fifth

384 THE REFORMATION. [1560

act, less tragic than the fourth, except for the reign of the
Bloody Mary, after whose death, in 1558, England has a few
years of unusual tolerance. What is most characteristic of
these seven years is the series of protests called out by the
murder of Servetus. Among the speakers and writers against
persecution are Zebedee, Gribaldi, Zurkinden, Castalio, Bol-
sec, Occhino, Renato, Oelso, Laelius Socinus, Cellarius, Ver-
gerio, Lyncurt, and Foncelet. Calvin and Beza write fiercely
on the other side, but Protestantism now does nothing worse
than burn the books and bones of that most daring of Mystics
who has called himself Christ David. To make up a list of
twelve apostles of tolerance, may be added to the names just
given that of L'Hopital, author of the first edicts designed to
make Catholics and Protestants live together peaceably.

The boldest writers during all this period, Copernicus,
Agrippa, Bunderlin, Servetus, Franck, Ludovici, Desperriers,
Berni, La Boe'tie, Jons, Gruet, Dolet, Marot, and Rabelais,
did their best work between 1530 and 1550. Before the
latter date thinking independently had become too dangerous
in Protestant as well as Catholic lands to be carried on open-
ly, but there is every reason to believe that it went on actively
in secret. It is hard to say whether intellectual liberty up to
the middle of the sixteenth century, was more indebted to the
Mysticism which arose in Germany and Holland out of the
Bible and Tauler, or to that French and Italian rationalism
which sprang from the revival of the classic philosophy. At
all events, mental progress was now more rapid than ever
before since the age of Cicero and Lucretius. It is needless
to say how rich and bright, especially in England, was the
new literature to which all this conflict of opinions soon led.

CHAPTER XL

CONCLUSION.

We have seen how easily liberty of thought conquered clas-
sic polytheism, how completely it was crushed by the emperors
and the Church, how cruelly it was persecuted as it slowly
revived during the latter part of the Middle Ages, and how
rapidly it grew during the Renaissance and Reformation,
though not to its former stature.

In this narrative, I have sought simply to state the import-
.ant facts accurately and clearly, and have left it for each
reader to draw his own conclusions. Though fully confident
of the incomparable advantages of greater liberty and activity
of thought, than have ever yet been reached, I have not had a
single specific proposition before me, as desirable or possible
to be proved. It was not until I had finished the previous
chapters, that I inquired what I had found out. In the final
revision, I saw that some general principles had been well
enough established to be worth mentioning, if only in order
to show how the facts should be interpreted.

The independent thinkers I have mentioned may properly
be divided into two schools. The first exercise of mental
liberty was in the search after scientific knowledge of natural
phenomena. This pursuit was carried on by those earliest of
Greek philosophers, the lonians ; and their results, with some
attained by more idealistic speculators, enabled the Epicu-
reans to free themselves from supernaturalistic fetters, by as-
serting that all phenomena take place according to laws neces-
sarily involved in the properties of matter, and that all
the distinction between right and wrong arises out of intrinsic
differences in human actions. This position was strengthened
by the labors of Peripatetics, Stoics, astronomers, and physi-
cians, and one of these last, Galen, who lived to 200 A.D.,

386 CONCLUSION.

was able to develop scientific positivism into agnosticism.
Thought was already becoming less free than before. More
than a thousand years elapsed before fondness for science
reappeared, and then only to call down twenty-four years of
imprisonment on Roger Bacon. Positivist principles were
soon after taught more obscurely and safely in the latter part
of the Romance of the Hose ; but they did not become much
known until the publication of the great works of Copernicus,
Vesalius, Rabelais, and Cardan, in the middle of the sixteenth
century, taught people to study facts instead of books.

Nearly as early in origin, and much more prominent in
classic literature, was that form of philosophy which recognizes
no higher authority than the deductions of the individual
reason, unverified by scientific investigation, and has thus been
led to insist with peculiar earnestness, on the greatest possible
liberty and activity of thought, as a necessity for both mental
and moral growth. The most famous champion of this view,
though not the earliest, is its great martyr, Socrates. His
views have come down to us mingled with theories peculiar
to his brilliant biographer ; but the liberatory tendency re-
mained predominant in ancient philosophy. Pyrrho showed
the bliss of keeping independent of all authorities, whether
theological or metaphysical, and thus founded a school of
skepticism, which soon conquered the Platonists, whose
reliance on intuition instead of experience was found* to-
result in utter uncertainty of opinion. Cicero gave this
view a permanent place in literature, and it was rapidly
supplanting the more scientific one, when both sank
beneath the pressure of imperialism, Neo-Platonism, and
Christianity. It was at the close of the eleventh century that
this metaphysical skepticism first reappeared, as Nominalism
began to demonstrate the unreality of abstractions, a truth
which Ockham was ere long enabled by imperial protection to
maintain against the pope. The same tendency showed itself
in the emperor Frederic II., and also among the bold exposi-
torfl of Averroism at Paris. Its spirit may also be detected in
Reynard the Fox, and other medieval satires. The sixteenth
century gave it a powerful champion inPomponatius, and placed

CO-OPERATING MOVEMENTS. 387

Rysswick and Gruet among its martyrs. Neither philosophic
nor scientific thought had done so much up to that time to
liberalize Christianity, as had been accomplished by less irre-
ligious heresies.

Faith in the soul's capacity for receiving direct light from
God, and coming into union with Him, led during the thir-
teenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries to such dis-
belief in the need of salvation by the help of the Church,,
that Dolcino levied open war against her, Rienzi tried to es-
tablish at Rome the reign of the Holy Ghost, predicted in the
Eternal Gospel, and the revolutionary agitation, carried on,,
first by the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, and then
by the Anabaptists, showed itself in the Peasants' war, as
well as in the excesses at Minister. Meantime a more peace-
ful but not less independent type of Mysticism had been devel-
oped by Eckhart, Tauler, and other Germans, whose influence
may be seen in Luther, but much more strongly in Paracelsus,
Schwenckfeld, and Sebastian Franck.

Before the appearance of heretical Mysticism, a more
rationalistic form of piety had shown itself in the Gnostics,
Manichaeans, Paulicians, and Catharists, the last of whom
were suppressed with peculiar cruelty. The same position
was taken by many individual scholars, some of whom, like
Origen, Abelard, Heloise, Erasmus, and Servetus, did good
service as biblical critics.

These four movements of scientific positivism, philosophic
skepticism, heretical Mysticism, and pious rationalism, all re-
ceived great though unmeant help from the Wycliffites,
Hussites, and Protestants, for the Roman Catholic Church had
trained herself so skillfully and armed herself so powerfully
for the destruction of intellectual liberty, that even Calvinism
has proved much less pernicious. The natural hostility be-
tween Protestantism and rationalism had, however, become un-
mistakable before the establishment of the Reformation.

It is hard to say whether it is to the Christian rationalists, the
Mystics, or the classic philosophers that we are most indebted
for teaching the duty of tolerance. This principle is neces-
sarily involved in the teachings of Socrates and Seneca ; but

388 CONCLUSION.

it was not stated by either of them formally. Its first exer-
cise was by the Buddhists ; and its earliest expression west of
India seems to have been in A.D. 25, when Cremutius Cordus
told the senate, who sentenced him to death for freedom of
speech, that " Errors in words should be punished by words
only." Hadrian and Antoninus Pius were taught by philoso-
phy to practice it, as was Zenobia. She and Galen are among
the few Pagans who are known to have judged fairly and in-
telligently of Christianity. The first Christian rulers who
tolerated differences in opinion were those Languedocian
princes Who were dethroned and murdered on this account.
Roger Bernard, Count of Foix, went so far as to declare that re-
ligion ought to be free to all, and that no one's liberty of wor-
ship should be interfered with, even by the pope. His instructors
were the Catharists, a sect whose persecution was severely
censured by Hildegard, the prophetess. She also spoke, as did
Abelard, in behalf of the Jews, who were not hunted down
systematically like the heretics, but yet were much worse
treated in Christian than in Moslem lands. They suffered
greatly from German and English mobs at the departure of
the crusades ; and such stories of the murder of Christian
children in the synagogues as stain the pages of Chaucer, and
have been ineffectually revived in our own day, often exposed
them to massacre. They were expelled successively from
England, France, and Spain, and where they were permitted
to remain, it was only to be insulted and plundered without
redress. Still, the worst of their sufferings are of rather early
date, and their condition in those parts of Western Europe
which they were allowed to inhabit in the sixteenth century,
was so much better than before, as to call out savage denunci-
ations from Martin Luther when most reactionary. Previ-
ously he had made strong protests against this and all other
persecution. So for a while had Calvin, whose share in the
murder of Gruet for denial of the right of the state to pun-
ish conduct not injurious to any one, as well as in that of Ser-
vetus for innovations in theology, is peculiarly culpable, be-
cause the Church of Rome had made peace with the Hussites
more than a century before, and had perpetrated but little per-

TOLEEANCE. 389

secution for seventy years, while More, Erasmus, Dolet, Rabe-
lais, and Cornelius Agrippa had made the guilt of intoler-
ance manifest. When a blameless scholar was burned to
death for his opinions by his fellow-Protestants, there was
such loud remonstrance as had never been heard before.
Thenceforth differences in opinion were punished less se-
verely, especially by Protestants. Spain was incorrigible,
and Rome took a great step backward as late as 1555, the
year when Mary of England incurred her epithet of infamy.
This persecution, however, ceased three years later, when that
in Southern Germany was discontinued, as was also that in
France in 1560. Venice had always quietly permitted her
subjects to worship as they chose. Tolerance had also been
practiced by Sigismuiid of Poland and Margaret of Navarre,
as it probably would have been by Juana of Castile, if her
disposition that way had not caused her to be deprived of
her throne, and kept by her own father and son in prison for
nearly fifty years. No scholar who encouraged persecution
after 1555, can have been ignorant that good and wise Chris-
tians had pronounced it wicked. The correspondence be-
tween the growth of tolerance and that of unbelief is so-
close as to show that religious faith is largely due 4o compul-
sion, exercised by people who have been educated into loy-
alty to the Church. It is also true that scarcely any nation
has ever given up .persecution until it has begun to grow
irreligious.

The increase and diminution of intellectual liberty, in its
various forms, has also been accompanied by corresponding
changes in the condition of women. Theano, Aspasia, Arete,
and Hipparchia, stand almost alone as female students of
philosophy during the period when it was still liable to per-
secution at Athens. Plato's proposition, that women should
be educated, like men, for a share in the government, was as
far in advance of the age as was that confidence in intellec-
tual activity which he had learned from Socrates. The in-
crease of enlightenment, which permitted Epicurus to teach
openly, brought Leontium and many other women into the
Garden. The decay of ancient institutions gave the Roman

390 CONCLUSION.

ladies a liberty which would have been complete if they had
been less superstitious. Early Christianity was equally suc-
cessful in restoring marital supremacy and unreasoning faith.
Those heretics, the Gnostics and Montanists, permitted wo-
men to preach ; but no ancient Christian of unblemished or-
thodoxy shewed himself so friendly to female independence
as the skeptical Seneca, Plutarch, Pliny, Hadrian, and Anto-
ninus Pius. Clement of Alexandria, who lost his place in
the list of saints more than a century ago on account of his
liberality, urged that women have as much right as men to
study philosophy, and gave high praise to Miriam, Sappho,
Theano, Aspasia, and Leontium. These names, with those of
Portia, Livia, Agrippina, the Arrias, Fannia, Sulpicia, Zeno-
bia, and Hypatia, show that more female ability had been
developed before the establishment of Christianity than can
be found afterward for centuries. Women had almost
ceased to figure in history, except as devotees, when they ap-
pear among the most zealous propagandists of Catharism,
whose sacraments they administered to the dying, and whose
deadliest enemy fell before a stone from their catapult. This
is the time when Heloise and Hildegard wrote, when Aver-
roes declared the frailty of women due to their habit of de-
pending on men, and when Waldensianism went so much
beyond Moslemism, Catholicism, or even Catharism, as to
permit female preaching, which afterward became customary
among the Taborites. The ardent Mysticism of the thirteenth
century found a new Messiah in Wilhelmina, and a similar
fancy appeared in the sixteenth. Pierre Dubois advocated
female education, as well as marriage of priests, and suppres-
sion of the papal sovereignty. His contemporary, Dolcino,
found Margaret as eager as himself to abolish all bonds of
outward obedience, and as steadfast in the fierce battle, the
long struggle with famine, and the final tortures. The four-
teenth century, .which suffered not only her but Marzia Orde-
lafti to wage war against the pope, produced also that philan-
thropic author, Christine de *Pisan, that eloquent and virtuous
heresiarch, Joan of Aubenton, and that great Queen Mar-
garet, who brought Norway, Sweden and Denmark together

EMANCIPATION OF WOMEN. 391

beneath her sway. Well might Chaucer celebrate female ca-
pacity, which was soon to receive a new illustration in Joan
of Arc. Among the glories of the Renaissance are the gifted
women of Italy, like Cassandra Fidele, the Averroist lecturer,
and Caterina Sforza, the defender of Forli against the Bor-
gias. Cornelius Agrippa showed his rare -originality and
independence in asserting the natural nobility of the female
sex, and its right to disregard Paul's command of silence in
the churches, to write books, to hold offices, and to plead in
the courts. I should perhaps have mentioned in the previous
chapter that the sixteenth century was as favorable to female
scholarship in England as the fifteenth had been in Italy.
Thus female activity and other forms of independence in-
creased together, and on account of the growing weakness of
the Church.

Equally close is the connection between political and relig-
ious liberty. Both flourished together in Athens, and then in
Rome, where imperialism showed itself to be their common
enemy. Both revived in the second century, but they van-
ished together after the establishment of Christianity. As
they slowly re-appeared during the Middle Ages, they found
their best friends in the same cities in Southern France, Cen-
tral and Northern Italy, and Western Germany. This volume
has mentioned many patriotic rationalists and heretics like
Empedocles, Zeno the Skeptic, Cicero, Brutus, Seneca, Arnold
of Brescia, Jean de Meung, Dolcino, Rienzi, Erasmus, Hutten,
Cornelius Agrippa, Carlstadt, Miinzer, and Sebastian Franck.
That William Rufus, John, Frederic II, Philip the Fair, and
other despots beo-ame unbelievers, is largely due to the fact
that the Church stood in the way of their ambition. England
was able to attain political freedom earlier than intellectual,
but she has since been pre-eminent in both kinds of liberty.

The question is somewhat complicated by the fact that a
man seldom becomes a rationalist, without such culture as has
been confined, until very recently, to the upper and privi-
leged classes, whose interests are aristocratic. Socrates, in-
deed, was of humble origin ; but his patrons and friends
were, for the most part, wealthy men of high rank, and his

392 CONCLUSION.

death was due to a sudden revolution in favor of the democ-
racy, in whose previous ascendency had occurred the persecu-
tion of Anaxagoras and Alcibiades. Not only Socrates, but
Plato and Aristotle found nobles and monarchs so much more
friendly than the common people, as fully accounts for their
disapproval of democracy. At Athens, and all over the Ro-
man empire, philosophy soon gained such ascendency among
people of rank and wealth, that Christianity had to begin by
converting the lower classes, for whose benefit it taught the
unimportance of social distinctions, except that between sub-
ject and emperor, said to be ordained by God. The humble
rank of Jesus and his Apostles also did much to give early
Christianity leveling tendencies, which gradually disap-
peared as it gained dominion over the upper as well as the
lower classes.

How completely the common people in Western Europe
had come under the power of the medieval Church is shown
by the failure, first of Catharism and then of Mysticism, to
establish itself, except for brief periods and in regions of
limited extent. Vainly did Dolcino call upon the Lombard
peasants to break every yoke, or Arnold of Brescia and Rienzi
exhort the Romans to restore the republic. Even less popu-
larity was won by those scholars who labored wholly for in-
tellectual liberty, like Erigena, Berengar, Roscellin, Abehird,
Peter of Bruis, Henry of Cluny, Averroes, Mairnonides,
Joachim of Floris, Amalric of Bena, Bacon, Ockham, Marsil-
ius, and Gerson. Peter of Bruis was actually murdered by a
mob, as Ilypatia had been. Berengar, Roscellin, and Abelard
ran great risk of perishing likewise. Peasant revolts began
to be formidable as early as the thirteenth century, but were
generally provoked by the pressure of material grievances,
though knowledge of the leveling doctrines of the New Tes-
tament proved dangerously incendiary in England, Bohemia,
and Germany. This influence did much to give Wycliffe,.
I hiss, Luther, and Zwingli a popularity which is also due
to their not attempting to diminish the national faith, but
merely to direct it to worthier objects. Even that could not
be done before the closing years of the fourteenth century.

BOOK-MEN. 393

And in the sixteenth the dogmatism of Luther and Calvin
was much more acceptable to the common people than was
the rationalism of Pomponatius, Cornelius Agrippa, Gruet,
and Servetus ; while the popularity of Erasmus and Rabelais
was greatest in the upper classes, who were the most severely
lashed by these satirists.

Among the rationalists and reformers mentioned in this vol-
ume, are the physicians, Ernpedocles, Democritus, Hippocrates,
Galen, Maimonides, Cade, Pietro of Abano, Cornelius Agrippa,
da Solo, Manzolli, Paracelsus, Rabelais, Servetus, Bolsec,
Vesalius, Cardan, and Copernicus. More than fifty clergy-
men, friendly to religious and political liberty, have also been
commemorated in these pages, but I need here only name
Arnold of Brescia, John Ball, and Mftnzer. Almost all the
other champions of progress, especially in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, are remarkable for love of books. Some
of the early philosophers, like Diogenes, and possibly
Socrates, educated themselves mainly by conversation ;
but Xenophanes seems to have been the only classic
thinker of importance who could be called self-taught.
Thales had studied in Egypt. The Buddha had received
some instruction, and so had most of the Hebrew prophets.
Amos seems to be the only one whose mission found him
utterly unprepared. Jesus is said to have sought instruction
of the learned men in the Temple when he was only twelve ;
and there is no reason to suppose that he did not often do so
afterward. We also read that he was in the habit of ex-
pounding the Old Testament in the synagogue at Nazareth ;
and his sayings show great familiarity with that work, as
well as with Hebrew literature generally. There is also some
reason, as we have seen, for supposing that he was under
Buddhist influence, as well as that he did not rise so far above
Judaism as is represented in the Gospels. (See* pp. 2 and G7).
Still he can not be called a scholar, nor can his Apostles, with
the exception of Paul, whose learning made him by far the
most original, energetic, and liberal.

The only medieval heresiarchs who worked independently of
books seem to be Tanchelm and Segarelli. Eon could quote

394 CONCLUSION.

the Bible, though not very rationally ; and Waldo had the
help of scholars. It is not unlikely that Dolcino had some
instruction from his priestly father. Leutard and Hans
Boheim seem to have acted under instruction ; Wat Tyler
had been preceded by John Ball ; and the other peasant re-
volts were largely due to Catharist, Mystic, Lollard, or Anabap-
tist instigators. Paracelsus had learned much from his father,
who was a physician, and from other teachers, had studied
Hippocrates and the Neo-Platonists zealously, and finally gave
up reading books to his own destruction.

In short, the work of discovering truth, exposing error, and
attacking oppression during the twenty centuries covered by
this history has been almost entirely performed by scholars,
or under their direction. Wendell Phillips was sadly mis-
taken when he said in his recent Phi Beta Kappa address :
" I do not think the greatest things have been done for the
world by its book-men." This volume has been mainly
occupied with what book-men have achieved, despite contin-
ual persecution, which uneducated people seldom tried to miti-
gate, and generally approved heartily. Another statement of
the brilliant orator who has done so much to make New En-
glanders think for themselves, is that, " Almost all the great
truths relating to society were not the result of scholarly
meditation." He forgot the services of Plato, Aristotle,
Tacitus, Averroes, Rienzi, Jean de Meung, More, Erasmus,
Cornelius Agrippa, Hutten, Carlstadt, Miinzer, Lyndsay,
Las Casas, Rabelais, Franck, Spifame, La Boe'tie, Knox,
and Bishop Poynet. All that was known about social rights
in the sixteenth century was due to these and other
scholars. Still, Mr. Phillips was more than half right,
for most of the members of his own class have always been
conservative. So-called education has commonly been per-
verted into teaching pupils to take for granted the authority
of teachers and text-books. Schools and colleges are still
busy making people think, as they did in the Dark Ages, that
knowledge must be got by studying books. The really lib-
eral education, of looking at facts directly and independ-
ently, has scarcely been inaugurated. The scholar's livelihood

BOOKMEN. 395

has usually been gained in the service of obstructive institu-
tions ; he has seldom succeeded in rising above the need of
guidance, a feat never accomplished by the illiterate ; and he
has often been provoked, by the indifference of the masses to
new truth, into doubting their capacity for self-government.
During the period covered by this volume, however, the
scholarly class contained nearly all the friends of progress ;
and their number has increased rapidly with the rise of the
standard of scholarship, while the illiterate class has proved
conservative throughout, except when material grievances
have made it revolutionary.

The general connection of the progress of culture with
that of political and religious liberty, is undeniable. All
three flourished together at Athens, were suppressed together
at Rome, struggled together to emancipate themselves from
medieval bondage, and made their inspiration felt in the
literature of the sixteenth century, as had not been done
for ages previously. And to show how much all three
gained from the decline of ecclesiastical tyranny, I must
here refer to some facts opposed to the common fancy that
monastic life has favored scholarship. The Church did her
best to check study outside of the cloister, but inside it
was constantly interfered with by fasts, vigils, scourg-
ings, lengthy devotions, for which sleep was interrupted
incessantly, prohibition to travel in search of books, ob-
jects of study, or learned society, and punishment for
reaching unfamiliar results. Gottschalk was imprisoned
for conversing more logically than his brother monks ; Abe-
lard was scourged for finding out new facts in history and
was compelled to turn hermit in order to study safely ; Ba-
con's fondess for scientific methods of thought kept him idle
for twenty-four years in convent dungeons ; Poggio could
find few scholars in the English monasteries ; Erasmus had
to get papal permission to quit the cloister before he
could study properly ; and Rabelais' literary activity is
due to a similar favor accorded to him after he had been
sentenced to life-long confinement for trying to learn Greek.

The whole effect of such a system must have been to make

396 CONCLUSION.

scholars conservative, and their seclusion from the world out-
side was particularly well adapted to prevent sympathy with
the people's wrongs. Thus the Renaissance, in making it
possible to get books and teachers outside of the monasteries,
at once increased, not only the amount of culture, but the in-
terest in political and religious freedom among scholars.

No form of scholarship gained more by this emancipation
than biblical criticism. The earliest work had been done by
heterodox or else pagan critics. Thus the incredibility of
Moses' account of the creation, and the immorality of mob-
bing tradesmen busy in the service of the worshipers in the
Temple were pointed out by Origen in the third century. So
was the real origin of the Book of Daniel by the kingly Por-
phyry ; but his work was promptly destroyed, with that in
which Julian brought to light the discrepancy in the Gospel
genealogies. Then biblical criticism slumbered, except among
Jews like Chivi of Balkh, for eight hundred years, until Abe-
lard and Heloise began to write what could not be published,
about the doubtful genuineness of James, the misquotation of
the prophets by Matthew, the uncertainty of the original text
of the New Testament, and the improbability that Jesus
cursed the fig-tree, or that Moses related his own death and
burial. No such speculations could be safely circulated be-
fore the fifteenth century, and Valla said much less then than
other critics did soon afterward. It is a significant fact that
Erasmus was in high favor among Roman Catholics, despite
his striking out as spurious the text about the " three that
bear witness in heaven," attacking the authenticity of He-
brews and other Epistles, and exposing the barbarous charac-
ter of the apostolic Greek ; while the attempt of Servetus to
make rational criticism of the Bible possible, by taking each
passage as addressed by its author directly to his own contem-
poraries, rather than to readers in later ages, and the
application of this principle by its discoverer to the so-
called Messianic prophecies, were among the charges on
which he was burned alive by the Genevese Protestants.
Idolatry of the Bible rendered them even more unwilling
than the Papists to have it made intelligible. Merely trans-

CAUSES OF CONSERVATISM. 397

lating it literally was but half of the work. The other half,
that of interpreting it rationally, has been slowly accomplished
during the last three centuries, on the principle discovered by
Servetus, and amid the constant opposition of the legitimate
successors of his murderers.

This inveterate, though diminishing dislike of the majority
throughout Christendom to have the truth told about the Bi-
ble, together with the repeated decision of many countries in
Europe for papistry rather than heresy, shows such a strong
inclination toward theological conservatism, as results, I
think, from the joint action of several causes. Total and sud-
den change of deep-rooted opinion is a painful process, espe-
cially for those who have not been trained to reason logically.
We all need to be taught by our fellow-men, and he who
never learns any thing from others is an ignoramus. The ad-
vantage of getting what information we can, and holding fast
to all we get, is so great, that people are apt to forget that, in
order to know the truth, it is also necessary to compare care-
fully all the knowledge we can get from any quarter, and dis-
card whatever is shown to be untrue by the light of reason
and experience. Then again, clear and positive statements
are so much more valuable, when justified by fact, than vague
ones, that dogmatic assertions are apt to be received with a
favor beyond their due. The attempt to take away definite
opinions without putting others equally definite in their places,
is usually treated as mischievous. People do not) consider
that the more firmly settled and clearly defined any
error has become, the worse is its influence, and the
greater is the benefit of getting rid of it. The advantage
of having settled opinions which are true, over remaining
unsettled, is so great as to make people forget that even
this last is better and safer than settling down on
what is false. Error must be unsettled, before truth can be-
come fixed. And it is not always possible to introduce well-
grounded certainty as fast as the ill-grounded is taken away.
The settled theory, popular as late as the sixteenth century,
that diseases are due to evil spirits and other supernatural
agents, was given up long ago ; but we have not yet got

398 CONCLUSION.

any other theory as definite on the subject, and perhaps shall
never have any. Dante and other Roman Catholics have
given minute descriptions of hell, which have gradually come
to be regarded as incredible, not because more probable nar-
rations have been generally adopted instead, but because
believers in future torments are now inclined to consider their
nature as indescribable. Very many Christians have ceased
to hold the Athanasian Creed, but have not attempted to put
any such precise statement in its place. This creed is upheld,
however, by people who can not believe it fully and literally,
but who had rather have even this definite statement, though
incorrect, than none at all. Luther showed this spirit when
he rebuked Erasmus for confessing an inclination to be as
skeptical as the Church permitted, and declared that for his
own part he wished to be as certain as possible, even about
trifles. " The Christian naturally delights in assertions," he
added. " Take away assertions, and you have taken away
Christianity." There is a great deal of this feeling still, and
it is the basis of the success, not only of the dogmatic theolo-
gian, but of the demagogue and the maker of almanacs. It
is this love of precise and minute statements which causes the
agnostic, who can not make them about theology, to be falsely
charged with inability to be sure of any thing.

Another reason why liberty of thought has been disliked,
is that it has been associated by Christian teachers with moral
guilt, ever since Paul put heresy into the same black list with
murder, adultery, and other "works of the flesh." Such
charges are still so common, that it is pleasant to find that
most of the early rationalists had an extremely good reputa-
tion. Empedocles, Parmenides, Protagoras, Gorgias, Peri-
cles, Socrates, Euripides, Plato, Antisthenes, Crates, Aristotle,.
Pyrrho, Epicurus, Lucretius, Brutus, Virgil, Messala, and
Cicero were among the best men of the age, as were the
Epicureans generally, according to the not altogether friendly
testimony of the author last mentioned. There is not much
to be said for Aspasia or Leontium, however, and the deprav-
ity of Alcibiades, Critias, Aristippus, Horace, Catullus, and
Julius Caesar must be admitted. Still there was a gratifying

MORALS OF SKEPTICS. 399

preponderance of virtue among the unbelievers, wnen they
had flourished long enough and had attained sufficient free-
dom, for the tendency of their views to become fully manifest.
History had thus far justified the opinion of Socrates, that
nothing is so favorable to morality as intense mental activity
and perfect liberty of thought. Imperialism, by lavishing
wealth and honor on its unscrupulous tools, permitting the
foulest tyrants to indulge their passions almost with impu-
nity, treating strength of character as criminal, checking
literary activity, and encouraging demoralizing amusements,
brought about a general decline of morality from which ra-
tionalists were not exempt, though Epictetus, the Plinies,
Antoninus Pius, and Galen were exceptionally virtuous. The
general character of the Paulicians, Catharists, Waldenses,
Mystics, Lollards, and Hussites was much better than that of
the church people. Simeon, Bernard of Clairvaux, Hilde-
brand, and Innocent III. had to admit the purity of their vic-
tims. The inquisition was unable to ferret out much vice,
even among such enthusiastic scorners of conventional re-
straints as the Brethren of the Free Spirit. Pungilovo, the-
Catharist, was so virtuous as almost to gain canonization, an
honor which had been already given to the Buddha. The
most hostile scrutiny of Erigena, Roscellin, Farinata, Bacon,
Dolcino, Dante, Eckhart, Ockham, Joan of Aubenton, and
Joan of Arc could bring nothing discreditable to light.
Abelard and Rienzi were most virtuous when least orthodox.
The only vicious unbelievers I know of during the middle
ages were tyrants, who hated the Church because she inter-
fered with their ambition, avarice, and sensuality, and who
despised the pojmlace all the more on account of its supersti-
tion. Irresponsible power has seldom been found compatible
with virtue, as is proved by the history of the orthodox em-
perors of Byzantium, of the pious Louis XL, and of the popes.
Liberal thinkers in general were liable to unusually severe
punishment for irregularity of conduct, so that they were as
strongly restrained from vice as any one could be by the
Church.

Papal iniquity was the main cause, according to Machia-

400 CONCLUSION.

velli, of the immorality which sullied the brightness of the
Renaissance, and which is sufficiently accounted for by fur-
ther considering how profligate and unscrupulous were the
invaders whom the popes had summoned into Italy, how
strong was the taste of the leading ecclesiastics for obscene
literature, and how cruelly the Church had checked the
spread of better teaching than her own. Poggio thought his
morals would be injured by taking orders ; Hutten and Are-
tino were no worse than most of the contemporary priests and
bishops ; and among the best men of the age were the heretic,
Savonarola, and the skeptics Leonardo da Vinci and Pom-
ponatius. The latter pronounces disbelief in immortality
highly favorable to morality. The reformers were saintly
men, despite their general bigotry, the treachery and false-
hood of Calvin toward Servetus, and Cranmer's cowardice.
The Minister depravity was exceptional, even among visionary
fanatics. Hetzer was the only rationalistic martyr whose
character could not stand the efforts made by both Protestant
and Catholic persecutors to justify themselves by showing the
immorality of their victims, the rest of whom like Miinzer,
Bainham, Anne Ascue, Dolet, Gruet, Servetus, Gribaldi and
Gentilis, are stainless. Joan Bocher should probably be
placed in the same category, though she did not escape
calumny. Paracelsus was guilty of nothing worse than in-
temperance. The most unfriendly criticism could detect
no serious fault in Erasmus, Bunderlin, Carlstadt, Rabelais,
Franck and Bolsec ; while Denck and Castalio attained
rare excellence, as did Schwenckfeld, whose holiness of life
was acknowledged by a cardinal. The general character
of the rationalists and come-outers recorded in history is
good enough to show that Socrates, Lucretius, and Pom-
ponatius were right in teaching that skepticism is peculiarly
favorable to morality.

Such facts as that Pyrrho and his followers during several
centuries found the greatest possible mental peace in keeping
free from belief in any theological or metaphysical views ;
that unusual happiness was enjoyed by Epicurus, Lucretius,
and their friends, and that extreme old age was reached by

HAPPINESS. 401

Thales, Xenophanes, Protagoras, Democritus, Diogenes,
Pyrrho, and Timon, together with all accessible knowledge
about other independent thinkers up to the present time, force
me to believe that Mallock is altogether wrong in asserting,
as he does in Is Life Worth Living? chapter IX., that there
are any " high-minded unbelievers " who say not only that
religious belief is false, but that unbelief is miserable.
Change of views in any direction usually causes some pain at
first, especially when accompanied by loss in family harmony,
social standing, or professional prospects ; but it often hap-
pens that the pleasure of mental activity and victory prepon-
derates from first to last ; and the cessation of inner conflict
in the establishment of any form of belief or disbelief,
always brings joy and peace. The only distress of import-
ance caused by unbelief is to believers. Rationalists and
come-outers find their views singularly conducive to happi-
ness.

Groundless as are these prejudices, they have united with
the limitations which still restrict scholars, with popular fond-
ness for definite creeds, with trust in the suificiency of learn-
ing from others without criticising, and with aversion to
changing views already fixed, to form that strong tendency
toward conservatism, which has resisted every attempt to
liberalize thought, and is likely to continue to do so, though
with increasing feebleness. The apprehensions expressed in
Count Goblet d'Alviella's richly-stored history of Free Re-
ligion, ^Evolution Religieuse Contemporaine, and in other
liberal publications, that liberty of thought is likely to be
eclipsed again, as in ancient times, by the rise of some new
religion, will not be felt by those who remember that classic
unbelief was confined to the upper classes ; that the Roman
emperors sought to suppress mental independence ; that
science was then in its infancy ; and that culture had not
become so general as at present. This phase of history
will never be repeated. A century hence thought will be
much more free than at present, but it will still be far from
having reached the full liberty which is its ultimate destiny.
Ability to think for one's self has been made more common

402 CONCLUSION.

than in the Dark Ages by that long struggle, a part of which
is recorded in this volume. Who can say how many more
centuries of effort will be needed to make the capacity uni-
versal ? Our path will never again be lighted by blazing fag-
gots ; but it can be carried forward only by such courage,
patience, and wisdom as have done the work that lies behind
us. No longer do our champions have to put forth all their
strength to defend themselves from destruction ; but there
is still enough for us all to do in liberating the enslaved
around us.

That every yoke will yet be broken, and the doors of all
prisons be unbarred, cannot be doubted by those who see how
many movements are working together for emancipation.
There are the various schools of thought which I have de-
scribed as scientific positivism, philosophic skepticism, inde-
pendent Mysticism, and pious rationalism, which last might be
called liberal Christianity, if it did not include such other move-
ments as independent theism, and progressive Judaism. Then,
besides the efforts to establish these ways of thinking, there is
the labor now going on for the growth of biblical criticism,
the destruction of intolerance, the emancipation of women,
the increase of political and social liberty, and the improve-
ment of general culture. Here are nine distinct movements,
all working for universal liberty of thought. When any of
these culminates, its force will be incorporated in the rest.
That all the progressive movements should fail together is
no longer a possibility. No one of these movements has ever
before reached its present perfection, or it could not have
been swept away. There is no more danger of the return of
the Dark Ages than of the relapse of New England into
Indian hunting-grounds, or of the revival of the mastodon and
icthyosaurus. Complete emancipation of thought may still
be distant, but it must surely come.

AUTHORITIES.

Important authors have been studied in their own writings ; the
standard Encyclopaedias, Biographical Dictionaries, and Histories of
Philosophy, Literature and the Church constantly consulted ; and the
following books on special subjects found to possess peculiar value.

CHAPTER I.

Edwin Arnold. — The Light of
Asia.

St. ffilaire.—Le Bouddha et
sa Religion.

Koppen. — Die Religion des
Buddha.

Wassiljew. — Der Buddhismus.

Stdudlin. — Geschichte des
Skepticismus.

Lange. — History of Material-
ism.

Lewis. — Astronomy of the
Ancients.

Lassalle. — Philosophic des
Herakleitos.

Zeller. — Presocratic Philoso-

Littre. — (Euvres d'
crate.

Funck-Brentano. — Sophistes
Grecs.

Hippo-

WecTdein. — Die Sophisten.

Grote. — Plato and the other
Companions of Socrates.

Zeller. — Socrates and the Soc^
ratic Schools.

Krohn. — Socrates und Xeno-
phon.

Alberti. — Sokrates,ein Versuch
nach den Quellen.

Zeller.— Plato and the Older
Academy.

Simon.— Theodicee de Platon
et d' Aristote.

Grote. — Aristotle. Fragments-
on Ethical Subjects.

Lewes. — Aristotle.

Stahr. — Aristotelia.

Geier. — Alexander und Aris-
toteles.

CHAPTER II.

Zeller. — Stoics, Epicureans, and
Skeptics.

Cicero. — Philosophical Treat-
ises.

Gassendi. — De Vita et Moribus
Epicuri.

Guyau. — Morale d'Epicure.

Diogenes Laertius. — Lives of
the Philosophers.

Sellar. — Roman Poets of the
Republic.

Veitch. — Lucretius and the
Atomic Theory.

Mallock. — Lucretius.

Delairibre.— Historic de P As-
tronomic.

404

AUTHORITIES.

CHAPTER III.

Schmidt. — Geschichte der
Denk- und Glaubensfreiheit im
ersten Jahrhundert.

Botesier. — L' Opposition sous
les Cesars.

Merrivale.— History of the Ro-
mans.

BeuU.—Tibere et L'Heritage
d' Auguste. Le Sang de Germani-
cus.

Lecky— History of European
Morals.

Friedlander.»SittengeschichtQ
Roms.

Renan. — The Apostles. St.
Paul. L'Antichriste. Marc-Aurele.

Matter. — Histoire Critique du
Gnosticisme.

Baur. — Die Christliche Gnosis.
Drei Ersten Jahrhunderte.

CHAPTER IV.

Hoyns.— Geschichte der Dreis-
sig Tyrannen.

Barbeyrac. — Morale des Peres
de P Eglise.

Mucke. — Flavius Claudius Ju-
lianus.

Ammianus.— Roman History.

Laurent. — Histoire de 1' Hu-
manite.

Redepenning. — Otigenes.

Lea. — History of Sacerdotal
Celibacy.

Milman. — History of Latin
Christianity.

CHAPTER V.

Sprengel. — Geschichte der
Arzneikunde.

Baur.— Kirche des Mittelal-
ters.

Taillandier. — Scot Erigene.

Kremer.— Culturgeschichte des
Orients.

Hammer- Pur gstall. — Litera-
tur-Geschichte der Araber. His-
toire de TOrdre des Assassins.

Schmidt. — Histoire des Cath-
ares ou Albigeois.

Lea. — Superstition and Force.

Gratz. — Geschichte der Juden.

John Owen. — Evenings with
the Skeptics.

Cousin. — Philosophie Scholas-
tique. Ouvrages Inedits de Abe-
lard.

KSinmat. — Abelard, sa Vie,
.si Philosophie, etc.

llunr&au. — Philosophie Scho-
lastiqae,

M. et Mine. Guizot. — Abailard
et Heloise.

Berington.— Literary History
of the Middle Ages.

Wright. — Latin Poems, com-
monly attributed to Walter
Mapes.

Keumont. — Geschichte der
Stadt Rom.

Francke. — Arnold von Bres-

cia.

Herzog. — Romanischen Wai-
denser.

Maitland.— Facts and Docu-
ments, Illustrative of the History
etc. , of the Albigenses and Wal-
denses.

Mclie.— Origin, etc., of the
Waldenses.

Renan . — Averroes.

Schmolders. — Documenta Phi-
losophise Arabum.

MUUer. — G eschichte der
scliweizerischen Eidgenossen-
schaft

Renter. — Geschichte der religi-
5sen Aufkliirung im Mittelalter.

A UTHORITIES.
CHAPTER VI.

405

Sismondi. — T he Crusade
against the Albigenses.

G-uizot. — Memoirs Relatives a
1'Histoire du France, Trois Chro-
niques.

Peyrat. — Histoire des Albi-

Lamothe-Langon. — L' Inquisi-
tion en France.

Molinier. — L'Inquisition dans
le Midi de la France.

Preger. — Die deutsche Mystik.

Rousselot. — L'Evangile Eter-
nel.

Potvin. — Le Roman du Renart.

Diez. — Di£ Troubadours.

Pfeiffer. — Walther von der
Vogelweide.

Kurz.— Handbuch der poeti-
schen Nationalliteratur.

Charles. — Roger Bacon.

Jubinal. — Ruteboeuf .

Besant. — French Humorists.

Lenient. — Satire en France au
Moyen Age.

Barbazan. — Tableaux et Con-
tes Francises.

Chaucer. — Roirfaunt of the
Rose.

Hurter. — Innocent VIII.

Huillard-Breholles. — Historia
Diplomatica Frederici Secundi.

Kington. — History of Freder-
ick the Second.

Schirrmacher. — Kaiser Fred-
rick II.

Cherrier. — Lutte des Popes
et des Empereurs.

Stubbs. — Constitutional His-
tory of England.

Pauli. — Simon de Montford.

Prothero. — Simon de Mont-
ford.

CHAPTER VII.

Soutane. — La France sans
Philippe le Bel.

J)rumann.— Geschichte Boni-
facius des Achten.

Tosti. — Vita di Bonifazio VIII.

Christophe. — La Papaute pen-
drant le XIVc. Siecle.

Wilcke.— Geschichte des Or-
dens der Tempelherren.

Raynouard. — Monumens His-
toriques Relatifs a la Condem-
nation des Chevaliers du Temple.

Michelet. — Proces des Temp-
liers.

Addison. — The Knights Temp-
lars.

Mariotti. — Fra Dolcino.

Longfellow— D&nt&s Divine
Comedy.

Foscolo. — Discorso sulTesto di
Dante.

Witte. — Dante Forschungen.

Aroux. — Dante Heretique.

/. Rossetti. — Spirito Antipa-
pale.

Lasson. — Meister Eckhart.

/Susanna Wirikworth.— History
and Life of Tauler.

C. Schmidt. — Gottesfreunde im
14. Jahrhundert. Johannes
Tauler von Strassburg.

Pappencordt. — Rom im Mittel-
alter.

Gregorovius. — Rom im Mittel-
alter.

Zefirino Re. — Vita di Rienzo.

Du Cerceau. — Conjuration di
Gabrino.

Mutter. — Ludwig der Baier.

Hdusser. — Die Sage von Tell.

Hissly. — Recherches Critiques
sur Tell.

Reilliet. — Origines de la Con-
federation Suisse.

Muratori. — Annales Cresena-
tes.

406

AUTHORITIES.

CHAPTER VIII.

Skeat. — Longland's Vision of
Piers' Plowman.

Lechler. — Johann von Wiclif.

Vaughan. — Life of Wy cliff e.
Tracts and Treatises of Wy-
cliffe.

Eadie.— History of the English
Bible.

Simon. — Chaucer a Wickliffite?

Morley. — English Writers.

Binding. — History of Scandi-
navia.

Otte. — History of Scandinavia.

Dahlmann. — Geschichte von
Diinemark.

Creighton. — Papacy during the
[Reformation.

Denis. — Huss et la Guerre des
Hussites.

Gillett. — Life and Times of
John Huss.

Palacky. — Geschichte von
BShmen.

I? Enfant. — Histoire du Con-

cile de Constance. Histoire du
Concile de Basle.

Lukavecz et Pelhzinow. —
Chronicum Taboritarum.

Bonnechose. — Reformers be-
fore the Reformation.

Schwab. — Johannes Gerson.

C. Schmidt.— Essai sur Jean
Gerson.

Wessenberg. — K irchenver-
sammlungen.

Voigt.— Enea Silvio.

Clemens. — Giordano Bruno
und Nicolaus von Cusa.

Hirzel. — Jean d'Arc (Virchow
und Holtzendorf 's Vortrage Bd.

Quicker at. — Proces de Jeanne
d'Arc.

O'Reilly.— Les Deux Proces de
Jeanne d'Arc.

Janet Tuckey. — Joan of Arc.

Wallon. — Jeanne d'Arc.

CHAPTER IX.

Hallam. — Introduction to the
Literature of Europe.

Voigt. — Wiederbelebung des
Alterthums.

Symonds. - - Renaissance in
Italy.

Burckhardt — Renaissance in
Italien.

Schultze. — Georgios Gemistos
Plethon.

Nisard. — Gladiateurs de la Re-
publique des Lettres.

Shepherd. — Life of Poggio.

Prescott.— Ferdinand and Isa-
bella.

.)//•*. Heaton. — Leonardo da
Vinci.

Detmold.— "Writings of Machi-
avelli.

Francke.— Moralistes et Philo-
sophcs.

Niceron.— Memoirs des Hom-
ines Illustres.

Buhle. — Geschichte der neuern
Philosophic.

Rio. — Poetry of Christian Art.

Hoffmann. — Geschichte des
Handels.

Anderson. — Origin of Com-
merce.

Leivis.—Life of Pecock.

Fournier. — Theatre Fran§aise
avant le Renaissance.

Humphreys. — History of the
Art of Printing.

Schmidt. — Geschichte der Pii-
dagogik.

Munsch. — Epistolse Obscuro-
rum Virorum, with which is
printed the Julius Exclusus.

Hagen. — Deutschland's litera-
rische und religiose Verhaltnisse
im Reformationszeitalter.

Geiger. — Johann Reuchlin.

Mayerhoff. — R e u c h 1 i n und
seine ZHt. '

AUTHORITIES.

407

Strauss. — Ulrich von Hutten.

Morley. — Cornelius Agrippa.

Seebohm. — Oxford Keformers.

Darand de Laur. — Erasmus.

Stichart. — Erasmus von Rot-
terdam.

Jortin. — Life of Erasmus.

Hitman. — Savonarola, Eras-
mus, and other Essays.

Villari. — La Storia di Girola-
mo Savonarola.

Perrens.— Jerome Savonarola.

Elizabeth Warren. — Savona-
rola, the Florentine Martyr.

Oliphant. — Makers of Florence.

Ulman. — Reformatoren bevor
der Reformation.

CHAPTER X.

Rarike— Geschichte der Refor-
mation.

Hdusser. — Zeitalter der Refor-
mation.

Baur— Kirchengeschichte der
neueren Ze^t.

Lindsay.— The Reformation.

Seebolim. — Era of the Protest-
ant Revolution.

Lecky. — Rationalism in Eu-
rope.

D'Aubigne.— History of the
Reformation.

Hallam. — Introduction to Lit-
erature of Europe.

Bunsen. — Life of Luther.

Kostlin. — Martin Luther.

Hare. — Vindication of Luther.

Henry.— Leben Johann Cal-
vins.

Wessenburg. — K irchenver-
sammlungen.

Cayley. — Memoir of Sir Thom-
as More.

Morley. — Cornelius Agrippa.

Taillandier. — Recherches sur
L'Hopital.

Lenient. — Satire en France au
XVIc. Siecle.

GeWiart. — Rabelais, La Ren-
aissance et La Ref orme.

Fleury. — Rabelais et Ses CEuv-
res.

Noel. — Rabelais et son (Euvre.

Arnstadt. — FranQais Rabelais
und sein Traite d'Education.

Christie. — Etienne Dolet.

Douen. — Etienne Dolet.

Morley. — Clement Marot.

Irving. — Memoirs of George
Buchanan.

Hess. — Vie de Zuingle.

Trechsel. — Antitrinitarier vor
F. Socin.

Strype. — Memorials.

Willis. — Serve tus and Calvin.

Roget. — Histoire du Peuple de
Geneve.

Hase. — Sebastian Franck.

Hagen. — Deutschland's lit. und
rel. Verhalttnisse.

Van Braght.— Martyrplogy.

Zimmermann.— Geschichte des
grossen Bauernkrieges.

Bebel. — Der Peutsche Bauern-
krieg.

Morley. — Jerome Cardan.

Morley. — Vesalius.

Waddington. — Vie de Ramus.

Daru.- — Histoire de Venise,vol.
XV. (on Ludovici).

CHRONOLOGY, B. C.

(EARLIEST DATES DOUBTFUL.)

640. Birth of Thales.

610. Birth of Anaximander.

585. Eclipse said to have been
foretold by Thales.

562. Death of Thales.

547. Death of Anaximander.

544. Ionia conquered by the Per-
sians.

540. Xenophanes begins to teach.

535. Birth of Heraclitus.

509. Pythagorean Order sup-
pressed.

502. Death of Anaximenes.

500. Birth of Anaxagoras.

483. Birth of Gorgias.

480. Greece invaded by Xerxes.
Birth of Euripides and Prota-
goras, also, according to some,
of the Buddha, whose death
is placed here by others. Com-
ing of Anaxagoras to Athens.

475. Death of Heraclitus.

469. Pericles begins to rule at
Athens.

468. Birth of Socrates.

460. Birth of Democritus and
Hippocrates. Arrival of Zeno
and Parmenides at Athens.

450. Death of Epicharmus.

448. Birth of Aristophanes.

444. Birth of Xenophon and
Antisthenes.

435. Birth of Aristippus.

432. Meton proposes his calen-
dar ; Anaxagoras and Damon
have to leave Athens ; Aspa-
sia and Phidias tried for im-
piety ; The latter dies in prison.

431. Outbreak of the Pelopon-
nesian war.

430. Death of Empedocles.

429. Death of Pericles ; Battle
of Potidaea ; Socrates begins
to teach about this time.

428. Death of Anaxagoras in
exile.

427. Birth of Plato ; Coming of
Gorgias to Athens.

423. Aristophanes attacks So-
crates in the Clouds ; Thucy-
dides is banished.

420. Democritus writes his Mi-
crocosmos.

415. The Mercuries mutilated,
and Alcibiades sentenced to
death.

413. Defeat at Syracuse ; The
Eclipse, Aug. 27.

411. Protagoras is banished and
Diagoras flees from Athens,
where a price is set on his
head.

409. Euripides driven from
Athens.

407. Alcibiades condemned the
second time ; Plato becomes
a pupil of Socrates.

406. Death of Euripides ; Birth
of Eudoxus.

405. Athens taken by Lysander ;
The Thirty Tyrants ; Death of
Alcibiades.

403. Thrasybulus liberates Ath-
ens.

399. Socrates put to death.

388. Plato in Sicily.

386. The Academy founded ;
Banquet written.

384. Birth of Aristotle.

376. Birth of Pyrrho.

372. Birth of Theophrast.

370. Death of Antisthenes.

CHRONOLOGY.

409

367. Plato in Sicily a second time.

364. Defeat and death of Pelo-
pidas.

361. Plato's third visit to Sicily.

360. Plato sold as a slave.

359. Dion dethrones Dionysius.

356. Death of Aristippus ; Birth
of Alexander.

353. Death of Dion and Eudoxus.

347. Plato dies ; Speusippus
head of the Academy.

342. Aristotle teacher of Alex-
ander.

341. Birth of Epicurus.

339. Speusippus succeeded by
Xenocrates.

337. Statues erected to ^Eschyl-
us, Sophocles, and Euripides
at Athens, and their works
preserved at the public ex-
pense.

335. Aristotle founds the Lyce-
um.

334. Alexander invades Asia.

332. Alexandria founded.

323. Death of Alexander and
Diogenes ; Aristotle has to
leave Athens; Ptolemy Soter
becomes ruler of Egypt.

322. Death of Aristotle.

320. Stilpo teaches at Athens.

316. Birth of Arcesilaus; Zeno in
Athens.

307. Censorship over the philoso-
phers attempted at Athens.

306. Epicurus begins to teach at
Athens ; Ptolemy Soter, found-
er of the Alexandrian library
and museum, assumes the
crown of Egypt.

304. Eristratus discovers the
valves of the heart.

300. Megasthenes visits India,

288. Death of Pyrrho.

287. Birth of Archimedes; Death
of Theophrast ; Strato head of
the Lyceum ; Its library is
buried.

283. Death of Euclid.

280. Chrysippus born ; Aristar-
chus observes the summer sol-
stice.

276. Birth of Eratosthenes.

271. Death of Epicurus.

263. Zeno dies, and Cleanthes
becomes head of his school.

260. Callimachus chief librarian
at Alexandria.

250. Birth of Apollonius of Per-
ga ; Death of Eristratus ; In
vention of Greek accents and
punctuation marks by Aristo-
phanes of Byzantium ; Hymn
of Cleanthes written ; Budd-
hism made a state religion
by King Asoka, about this
time.

241. Death of Arcesilaus.

240. Death of Callimachus.

239. Birth of Ennius.

219. Birth of Pacuvius.

212. Death of Archimedes.

207. Death of Chrysippus.

203. Birth of Polybius.

195. Death of Eratosthenes.

190. Birth of Hipparchus.

1 86. Bacchanalia suppressed at
Koine.

173. AlcaBus and Philiscus ban-
ished from Rome as Epicure-
ans.

170. Birth of Attius.

169. Death of Ennius.

1 68. Victory at Pydna in conse-
quence of prediction of eclipse,
June 21, by Gallus.

161. Rationalistic philosophers
and rhetoricians banished by
the Roman senate.

156. Carneades in Rome.

150. Pansetius teaching at Ath-
ens.

148. Birth of C. Ennius Lucilius.

146. Hipparchus observes the
vernal equinox .

139. Chaldean astrologers driv-
en out of Italy.

133. Tiberius Gracchus murder-
ed ; Lyceum library brought
to light.

129. Death of Pacuvius.

121. Death of Polybius.

120. Death of Hipparchus.

106. Birth of Cicero.

102. Lutatius consul.

100. Birth of Julius Caesar.

-410

CHRONOLOGY.

99. Birth of Lucretius.

97. Human sacrifices prohibited
by the senate.

82. Death of Scaevola.

74. Julius Caesar becomes Pon-
tifex Maximus.

70. Birth of Virgil.

65. Birth of Horace.

63. Birth of Octavius, after-
ward Augustus ; Julius Caesar
declares before the senate that
death is an eternal sleep.

55. Accession to power of First
Triumvirate ; Death of Lucre-
tius, and publication of his
poem.

48. Pharsalia.

47. Varro's book on religion.

46. Caesar reforms the calendar.

45. Cicero writes his philoso-
phical treatises.

44. Caesar assassinated.

43. Cicero murdered ; birth of
Ovid.

42. Philippi ; Birth of Tiberius.

38. Horace gains the friendship
of Maecenas.

31. Actium.

30. Death of Antony and Cleo-
patra ; publication of the
Georgics ; Opening of the first

public library at Eome in the
Temple of Liberty.

29. Octavius returns to Home
and begins the Restoration of
Polytheism.

28. He builds or restores nine-
ty-two temples ; Death of
Varrp.

24. Virgil is working on the
Mneid.

23. Horace publishes three
books of Odes.

22. Number of gladiators re-
stricted legally.

21. Worship of Isis forbidden
at Rome.

19. Death of Virgil, Sept. 22.

17. The Secular Games cele-
brated, and the ^Jneid pub-
lished.

12. Octavius, now Augustus,
becomes Pontifex Maximus,
and destroys 2,000 Sibylline
Books.

8. Death of Maecenas and Hor-
ace.

7. Birth of Seneca.
4. Birth, about this time, of
Jesus.

2. Ovid's Art of Love pub-
lished.

CHRONOLOGY, A. D.

4. Death of Pollio ; Augustus
banishes slanderers and burns
their books.

8. Banishment of Ovid and
Cassius Severus, and burning
of the latter's history.

11. Death of Messala.

12. Labienus starves himself to
death, because his history is
publicly burned, as are other
independent books.

14. Death of Augustus, Aug.

9 ; Accession of Tiberius.
1 6. Magicians expelled from

Italy.

1 8. Death of Ovid and Livy.

19. Temple of Isis at Rome de-
stroyed, her image thrown

into the Tiber, and her wor-
shipers banished, as are the
Jews.

20. Manilius completes his
poem.

21. Lutorius Priscus murdered
in prison for his elegy on a
prince who did not die ; Un-
successful attempts to prevent
wives of governors and gener-
als from taking part in poli-
tics.

22. ^Elius Saturn inus thrown
from Tarpeian Rock for poems
disliked by Tiberius ; Birth of
Pliny the Elder.

25. Cremutius Cordus condemn-
ed to death for freedom of

CHRONOLOGY.

411

speech, by the Senate, who
orders his History of the Civil
Wars to be burned by the
^Ediles.

26. Tiberius leaves Borne, where
Se janus carries on a reign of
terror.

28. Jesus begins to preach, ac-
cording to Luke.

29. Crucifixion of Jesus, March
25 ; Death of Livia.

.30. Asinius Gallus imprisoned
for rivalry in both love and
politics to Tiberius.

31. Fall and execution of Se-
janus.

33. Cassius Seyerus starved to
death in exile and Asinius
Gallus in prison.

34. Mamercus ./Emilius Scaurus
has to kill himself for verses
in ridicule of Agamemnon.

35. Conversion of Paul.

37. Tiberius dies March 16, and
is succeeded by Caligula ;
Birth of Nero ; Name of
Christian first used at An-
tioch.

39. Carrinas Secundus and
Thrasymachus banished for
orations in praise of tyranni-
cide.

41. Assassination of Caligula,
Jan. 24, and accession of
Claudius, who banishes Seneca
to Corsica.

42. Death of Foetus and Arria.

43. Laws against Druidism.
45. Apollonius of Tyana visits

India.

49. Seneca recalled from exile
and made tutor of Nero.

50. Birth of Plutarch about
this time.

51. Birth of Domitian.

52. Paul preaches at Athens,
and writes the Epistles to the
Thessalonians, the oldest
books in the New Testa-
ment.

.54. Claudius poisoned, Oct. 13,
by Agrippina, who makes Nero
•emperor ; Birth of Tacitus ;

Banishment under Claudius of
the Jews from Italy.

55. Murder of Britannicus by
his brother, Nero.

57. Pomponia Grsecina accused
of practicing a foreign super-
stition, possibly Christianity ;
Paul's First Epistle to the Cor-
inthians written.

59. Nero murders his mother ;
Paul writes the Epistle to the
Romans, and is soon after im-
prisoned at Jerusalem ; Death
of Domitius Afer.

60. Demetrius teaches in Cor-
inth ; the First Epistle of Pe-
ter is written about this time.

61. Paul enters Home ; Birth
of Pliny the Younger.

62. Antistius tried for satire on
Nero by the senate, who are
persuaded by Thrasea to spare
his life, against the emperor's
wish ; Veiento banished for
writing against the priesthood,
and his books burned ; Death
of Persius and Burrhus ; Mur-
der of Octavia and of Plautus,
the Stoic, by Nero.

63. Seneca writes his Questions
about Natural History.

64. Burning of two-thirds of
Borne, July 19-25 ; Cruel per-
secution of the Christians
afterward.

65. Failure of Pisp's conspiracy;
Among Nero's victims are his
wife Poppasa, Lucan, Seneca,
Gallic, and probably Paul and
Peter.

66. Petronius Arbiter forced by
Nero to kill himself ; Thrasea,
Soranus, and Servilia con-
demned to death by the sen-
ate ; Helvidius banished, as
are Rufus, Cornutus, Apollo-
nius, and all the other philoso-
phers ; the Komans are driven
out of Jerusalem.

68. Eebellion of the armies in
Spain, Gaul, Germany, Pales-
tine and Africa ; Nero is con-
demned by the senate to be

412

CHRONOLOGY.

scourged to death, and kills
himself, June 10 ; Galba be-
comes emperor, and the Revel-
ation of John is written dur-
ing his reign.

69. Galba murdered, Jan. 15 ;
Wars of Otho with Vitellius,
and of the latter with Vespasi-
an, who is acknowledged em-
peror after Dec. 22 ; Helvidius
tries during this year and the
next to assert the privileges of
the senate against both Vitel-
lius and Vespasian.

70. Jerusalem taken by Titus.

71. Helvidius put to death.
74. Philosophers banished.
79. Pliny the Elder dies.

81. Domitian becomes emperor.

90. Philosophers driven from
Rome, on which Sulpicia is
supposed to have written her
satire.

94. Reign of terror ; Juvenal's
second satire written.

95. Persecution of Christians.

96. Assassination of Domitian,
Sept. 18, and accession of Ner-
va ; Clemens Romanus writes
about this time.

98. Accession of Trajan.

104. Pliny the Younger writes
about persecuting the Chris-
tians, (some say 112.)

115. Martyrdom of Ignatius.

117. Accession of Hadrian.

1 1 8. Death of Tacitus.
120. Death of Plutarch.

125. Birth of Lucian ; Teaching
of Basilides in Alexandria.

130. Birth of Galen.

138. Antoninus Pius becomes
emperor.

140. Valentinus teaching at
Rome.

144. Marcion comes to Rome.

150. Lucian comes to Rome ;
Death of Dcmonax ; Justin
Martyr's Firxt, A />of <></*/ and
Polycarp'0 A/;/.v//r in the. Pliil-
ippians written ; Rise of Mon-
( an ism; Ptolemy and Nume-
nius flourish about this time.

161. Marcus Aurelius begins to
reign, and the empire to suffer
a series of calamities.

164. Death of Justin Martyr.

165. Lucian begins to write.

1 66 or 169. Martyrdom of Poly-
carp.

1 68. Marcellina comes to Rome ;
Suicide of Peregrinus Proteus.

170. Montanists declared here-
tics.

177. Persecution at Lyons.

1 80. Death of Marcus Aure-
lius ; Pantsenus begins to teach,
in Alexandria; Celsus writes
against Christianity.

182. Lucian writes about Alex-
ander the False Prophet.

185. Birth of Origen.

192. Dec. 31, Commodus assas-
sinated.

200. Galen and Luc-an die ; Ter-
tullian and Clement of Alex-
andria are now teaching and
writing.

201. Ammonius Saccas teaches
at Alexandria ; Diogenes Laer-
tius writes his history during
the first quarter of this cen-
tury.

212. Persecution of the Peripa-
tetics commanded by Cara-
calla, who now has 2,000 of
his subjects massacred.

217. April 8, Caracalla assassin-
ated.

220. Death of Tertullian and
Clement of Alexandria.

222. Accession of Alexander Se-
yerus, who permits much liberty
in teaching and worship.

250. Persecution of Christians re-
commenced.

251. The Emperor Decius de-
feated and slain by the Goths.

254. Death of Origen.

258. Martyrdom of Cyprian.

259. Christianity tolerated in the
West.

261. Toleration all over the em-
pire.

263. Odenathus acknowledged aa
associate emperor.

CHRONOLOGY.

413

267. Athens plundered by the
Goths ; Porphyry comes to
Eome ; Zenobia begins to
reign ; Perfect toleration at
Palmyra.

270. Porphyry writes against
Christianity ; Death of Plo-
tinus.

273. Capture of Palmyra ; Death
of Longinus.

274. Birth of Constahtine.

275. Tacitus elected emperor by
the senate.

276. Tacitus succeeded by Pro-
bus.

277. Death of Manes.

282. Murder of Probus, last em-
peror who is controlled by the
senate.

284. Accession of Diocletian.

303. Persecution of Christians.

305. Death of Porphyry ; Origin
of Monasticism by Antony.

306. Constantine proclaimed em-
peror.

308. Five emperors actually rul-
ing, and a sixth nominally in
power.

312. Constantine master of the
West.

313. Edict of Milan, by Constan-
tine and Licinius, establishing
toleration throughout the em-
pire ; Death of Diocletian ;
Eise of the Donatists.

315. Churches exempted from
taxation by Constantine.

318. Property of the Donatists
confiscated ; Arius begins to
preach.

319. Pagan rites still permitted
by the edict of Constantine.

321. Observance of Sunday pre-
scribed.

323. Constantine sole emperor.

324. Constantinople founded.

325. Council of Nicaea ; Arius
condemned, and possession of
his writings made a capital
crime ; Nicene creed imposed ;
Marriage of priests permitted.

326. Constantine murders his son
and wife, and confiscates sev-

eral temples ; Athanasius be-
comes bishop.
331. Birth of Julian.

336. Banishment of Athanasius ;
Death of Arius ; The Apostles
Creed drawn up about this
time in Jerusalem.

337. Baptism and death of Con-
stantine.

338. Constantino's sons murder
their relatives.

340. Constantine II. murdered
by the soldiers of his brother,
Constans.

341. Constantius forbids sacri-
fices ; Athanasius banished
again.

346. Sacrifice made a capital
crime ; Temples closed, but not
permitted to be destroyed.

349. Bishop Gregory murdered
at Alexandria in a sectarian
tumult.

351. Julian becomes a pagan at
Athens.

352. Paul, bishop of Constanti-
nople, murdered by the Arians;
Great loss of life in this con-
test.

354. More bloodshed at Constan-
tinople, and also in Paphlago-
nia, arising from favor given,
by the emperor to Arianism.

355. Julian sent into Gaul ; Pope
Liberius and other partisans
of Athanasius banished, and
compelled to recant.

356. Sacrifice made a capital
crime, by an edict to which
Julian's name is appended by
the emperor.

357. Great victory of Julian
over the Germans at Stras-
burg.

360. Julian proclaimed emperor
by his victorious army.

361. Death of Constantius leaves
Julian supreme.

362. Julian proclaims toleration,
but makes paganism the state-
religion in place of Christi-
anity, annuls the laws against
sacrifice and in favor of observ-

414

CHRONOLOGY.

ing Sunday, recalls the bishops,
restores all the places of wor-
ship taken from pagans, Jews,
or Athanasians, restricts liber-
ty of teaching, and connives at
the murder of George, bishop
of Alexandria, and other Chris-
tians.

363. Death of Julian in battle
against Persia, June 26; Jovian
restores Christianity to supre-
macy, but tolerates paganism.

364. Empire divided between
Valens and Valentinian.

365. Valens, the emperor of the
East, issues an edict against
the monks.

366. Damasus elected pope after
a bloody strife with the other
candidate.

367. Valens persecutes the Atha-
nasians.

372. Many philosophers mur-
dered by Valens on the charge
of sorcery.

373. Death of Athanasius.

376. Valens attempts to force
the Egyptian monks kito his
army.

378. Valens slain by the Goths.

379. Theodosius emperor of the
East.

380. Feb. 23, Theodosius, Gra-
tian, and Valentinian II. com-
mand all their subjects to hold
the faith taught by the Apostle
Peter and Pope Damasus ; A
series of edicts in this and sub-
sequent years prohibits heretic
and pagan worship, makes the
sacrifice of animals a capital
crime, orders temples to be
closed and books destroyed,
threatens death against Mani-
chseans, Arians, etc. ; Many
temples destroyed.

385. Bishop Priscillian executed
at Treves, then under the rule
of Maximus, for heresy, with
six followers, one of whom is a
woman ; This judicial murder
is blamed by Ambrose and
Martin of Tours.

386. Siricius becomes pope, and
does much for the celibacy of
the Latin clergy during his
pontificate.

389. Alexandrian library de-
stroyed, with Temple of Sera-
pis, by Theophilus the patri-
arch.

390. Jovinian excommunicated
by Ambrose.

395. Death of Theodosius, who
has suppressed paganism.

396. Alaric invades Greece.

397. Death of Siricius, Ambrose,
and Martin.

400. Alaric invades Italy.

402. Innocent I. becomes pope.

404. Gladiatorial games end at
Rome ; Chrysostom goes into
exile.

405. Pelagius begins to teach ;
Vigilantius opposes celibacy
and worship of relics.

406. Jerome declares that Vigi-
lantius ought to be put to
death ; Gaul is overrun by
Goths and Vandals.

407. Death of Chrysostom.

408. Siege of Rome by Alaric ;
All pagan ceremonies prohib-
ited by its emperor, Honorius.

409. Spain invaded by Goths and
Vandals.

410. Rome sacked by Attila.

411. Augustine begins to write
his City of God ; Public wor-
ship of heretics made a capital
crime in the Western Em-
pire.

412. Birth of Proclus.

415. Hypatia murdered with the
connivance of Cyril, patriarch
of Alexandria.

416. Pagans excluded from office
in the Western Empiiv.

417. Persecution of the Donatists
defended by Augustine ; Pela-
gius condemned by Pope Inno-
cent I.

418. Honorius banishes the Pela-
gians from Rome and other
cities, at the request of Augus-
tine ; thus it is made a crime

CHRONOLOGY.

415

to say that men are naturally
capable of virtue.
420. Death of Jerome.

422. Simeon Stylites mounts his
pillar.

423. Doubt expressed in an im-
perial edict if there are any
pagans left.

428. Augustine's City of God
finished.

429. The Vandals invade Africa,
and are joined by the Don-
atists.

430. Death of Augustine ; Nes-
torius and Cyril ask Pope
Celestine to decide between
them.

433. Patrick preaches in Ireland.

435. Nestorius is banished with
his followers, by Theodosius
II. , who has the works of Julian
and Porphyry destroyed.

440. Nestorius dies in exile ; Van-
dals invade Sicily ; Leo I. be-
comes pope.

441. Attila invades the Eastern
Empire.

442. Africa ceded to the Vandals.

444. Manichaeans outlawed by
Leo and their books burned.

445. Semi - Pelagianism intro-
duced by Bishop Faustus.

449. Robber-council of Ephesus,
when the patriarch of Constan-
tinople is murdered by the
patriarch of Alexandria in pres-
ence of three hundred bishops,
and the oneness of Christ's
nature asserted ; Saxons enter
England.

45 1 . Council of Chalcedon makes
the doctrine that Jesus has two
natures united in one person
orthodox ; Attila defeated at
Chalons.

452. Attila invades Italy ; Rome
saved by Leo.

453. Death of Attila.

455 Rome sacked by the Van-
dals.
476. End of the Western Empire.

483. Death of Patrick of Ireland.

484. The pope of Rome and pa-

triarch of Constantinople ex-
communicate each other in a
quarrel brought on by the
Matter's tolerance ; Death of
Proclus.

486. Clovis invades Gaul with
his Franks.

489. Nestorian school at Edessa
broken up by the Emperor
Zeno.

492. Accession of Gelasius, who
strongly asserts papal suprem-
acy.

493. Theodoric the Ostrogoth be-
comes king of Italy, and shows
great tolerance.

494. Benedict becomes a monk.
496. Baptism of Clovis in conse-
quence of his victory at Tolbiac.

500. Persecution of the Jews
prevented by Theodoric.

506. Alaric II. , the Visigoth, pub-
lishes the Breviary of Roman
Law.

507. Alaric defeated and slain
by Clovis.

510. Paris seat of monarchy of
Clovis.

511. Death of Clovis.

512. Religious riots in Constan-
tinople against the Emperor
Anastasius, accused of heresy
and persecution on account of
his tolerance.

514. Civil war waged by Vital-
ianus against Anastasius with
the approval of the pope.

515. Sigismund, king of the Bur-
gundians, becomes orthodox.

525. Boethius and Symmachus
put to death by Theodoric .

527. Justinian becomes emperor.

528. Benedictine Order founded.

529. Justinian suppresses the
schools of philosophy, issues
edicts against pagans and here-
tics, and publishes his Codex
of imperial edicts.

533. The Pandects or digest of
early law, published.

534. Africa conquered and Ni-
cene Creed imposed by Beli-
sarius.

416

CHRONOLOGY.

540. Italy temporarily subdued
by Belisarius.

554. Italy becomes a province of
the Eastern Empire.

565. Deaths of Justinian arid Be-
lisarius ; Monastery of lona
founded.

568. Lombard kingdom estab-
lished in Upper Italy.

570. Birth of Mahomet.

589. King Richard of Spain
adopts Nicene Creed.

594. Death of Gregory of Tours.

597. Austin arrives in England.

607. Death of Austin.

610. Mahomet begins to preach.

612. Sisebert begins to reign in
Spain, and forces the Hebrews
to receive baptism or emi-
grate.

622. July 16, The Hegira, or
flight of Mahomet from Mecca.

632. Death of Mahomet.

634. Capture of Damascus by the
Moslems.

637. Jerusalem captured.

638. Antioch captured ; Council
of Toledo expels Jews from
Spain.

639- Egypt invaded by the Sara-
cens.

640. Alexandria captured.

651. Pope Martin dies in exile ;
Origin of Paulicianism.

658. Beginning of the Gaonic
Period among the Hebrews.

662. A monk named Maxim us
murdered as a heretic by the
Monothelite emperor Constans.

675. Council of Braga forbids
bishops to strike priests, ex-
cept for deadly sins.

680. Death of OaBdmon, first
British poet.

684. ronstantine, the founder of
Paulicianism, stoned to death.

690. Simeon, who directed this
execution, is burned to death
with other Paulicians jiniong
whom he has lately become
chief prophet.

693. Council of Toledo decrees
divine right of kings and for-

bids the Jews to hold real es-
tate.

694. All the Jews in Spain en-
slaved.

697. First doge elected at Venice.

711. Spain conquered by the
Saracens.

723. Jews and Montanists perse-
cuted by Leo the Isaurian.

726. Leo issues an edict against
image- worship.

727. Leo resisted by the pope.
732. Saracens driven back by

Charles Martel at Tours.

750. Abasside caliphs begin to
rule over Persia, Syria, Ara-
bia, and Egypt.

751. The Lombards take Raven-
na and end the rule of Byzan-
tium over Italy.

752. Merovingian kings over-
thrown by Pepin, son of
Charles Martel. with the ap-
proval of the pope.

755. King Pepin makes the pope
a temporal prince.

756. Cordova becomes the capi-
tal of the Western caliphs.

758. Bagiidad founded by Al-

mansor.

768. Charlemagne becomes king.
774. The Lombards conquered by

Charlemagne.

778. Charlemagne's rear-guard
defeated at Ronccsvalles.

779. Birth of Agobard.

787. Ima g< ; - w o rs hip re - estab-
lished by the Empress Irene.

792. Felix of Urgel condemned
by Charlemagne and the Coun-
cil at Ratishon.

794. Felix condemned again at
Frankfort, and imprisoned for
life, because he will not recant
Adoptianism.

800. Charlemagne crowned by
Pope Leo 111., on Christmas
morning in St. Peter's.

814. Charlemagne dies.

818. Death of Felix, bishop of
Urgel, in prison for heresy.

820. Fabrication of the so-called
Athanasian Creed.

CHRONOLOGY.

417

839. Death of Claudius, bishop
of Turin.

840. Death of Agobard, bishop
of Lyons ; Accession of Charles
the Bald in France.

842. Final restoration of image-
worship.

843. Erigena invited to Paris.
845. Revolt of Carbeas the Pauli-

cian ; First quotation of the
False Decretals ; Synod of
Meaux attacks the Jews.

848. Gottschalk condemned at
Metz for ultra predestinariari-
ism.

849. Synod of Rheims has Gotts-
chalk scourged and imprisoned
for life.

850. Persecution of the Motaz-
alites about this time.

855. Council of Valence con-
demns Erigena.

868. Gottschalk dies in heresy.

871. Tephrica, the Paulician
strong-hold, captured by the
Emperor Basil ; King Alfred
wins the battle of Ashdown
against the Danes.

877. Death of Charles the Bald,
who has recently become em-
peror of Germany.

909. A great hospital built in
Baghdad, with Rhazes, dis-
coverer of alcohol, as chief
physician and examiner of
would-be practitioners.

959. Dunstan becomes arch-
bishop of Canterbury.

961. Al-Hakim II. begins to
reign in Andalusia, and to
patronize literature and sci-
ence.

963 Deposition of Pope John
XII. for his iniquities by Otho
the Great,

965. Aaron the Jew, professor
of medicine at Cordova,
now the seat of a great uni-
versity.

970. Paulicians transported to
the Danube.

976. Death of Al-Hakim, who
has established eighty public

schools in Cordova, and an
immense public library.

978. Birth of Avicenna^in Bok-
hara.

987. Accession of Hugh Capet.

990. A public library in Bagh-
dad.

993- Opening of the University
of Baghdad.

998. Birth of Berengar and
Peter Damiani.

999. Sylvester II. becomes pope
after studying at Cordova.

1000. Persecution of Leutard
and Bilgard.

1004. Foundation of University
of Cairo, still extant.

i oio. Jews driven out of Limo-
ges.

1012. Jews expelled from Mainz.

1 020. Murder of Caliph Al-
Hakim of Egypt, founder of
the Druses; Birth of Avice-
bron.

1022. Stephen and twelve other
Catharists burned to death in
France.

1030. Gerard and other Cathar-
ists burned at Milan.

1037. Death of Avicenna.

1039. German emperor at his
height of power.

1049. Hildebrand's influence su-
preme at Rome.

1050. Berengar condemned, and
his book burned ; Avicebron
writes his Fountain of Life.

1052. Catharists hung at Goslar,
Hanover.

1056. Henry IV. becomes em-
peror.

1058 Birth of Al-Gazali ; Peter
Damiani becomes cardinal.

1059. Berengar recants at Rome.

1066. Norman conquest of En-
gland.

1072. Death of Peter Damiani.

1073. Hildebrand becomes Greg-
ory VII.

1075. Berengar nearly murdered
by a. mob at Poitiers.

1076. Jerusalem taken by the
Turks.

418

CHRONOLOGY.

1077. Humiliation of Henry IV.
before Gregory VII. , at Canos-
sa, Jan. 25-27.

1078. Berengar's second recanta-
tion at Rome.

1979. Birth of Abelard .

1084. Home taken by Henry IV.

1085. Death of Gregory VII. in
exile.

1088. Death of Berengar.

1090. The Assassins establish
themselves at Alamut,

1091. Birth of Bernard of Clair-
vaux.

1092. Roscellin recants at Sois-
sons.

1093. Anselm archbishop of
Canterbury.

1094. The first Crusade preached
by Peter the Hermit.

1095. Al-Gazali retires from the
world.

1096. Hebrews of Worms, Mainz,
Spire, and Treves persecuted
by the departing crusaders.

1096. Meeting of Roscellin and
Abelard in Loches, Touraine.

1098. Birth of Hildegard.

1099. Jerusalem taken by cru-
saders, July 15.

noi. Birth of Heloise.

1 1 02. Abelard begins to teach.

1104. Revolt of Henry IV.'s son

with the sanction of Pope

Paschal II.
1106. Al-Gazali's books burned

in the mosques in Spain and

Morocco.

1109. Death of Anselm.
mi. Death of Al-Gazali.

1113. Emperor's vicar defeated
and slain by Florentines.

1114. Abelarjj master at Paris.

1115. Irnerius teaching Roman
l;i\v at Bologna; Tanchelm
and Henry of Cluny begin to
preach.

1118. Abelard meets Heloise;
Orders of Templars and Hos-
pitallers founded.

1119. Basil, the Bogomilian Ca-
tharist. cut nipped and burned
by Alexius Comnenus.

1 120. Death of Roscellin.

1 121. Abelard condemned at
Soissons.

1 122. Concordat of "Worms be-
tween emperor and pope.

1125. Tanchelm murdered by a
priest ; Peter of Bruis burned
by a mob ; Death of the Old
Man of the Mountain or
founder of the Assassins.

1126. Birth of Averroes ; Abe-
lard becomes abbot of St. Gil-
das de Rhuys.

1130. Avicenna, Avicebron, Av-
empace, and Al-Gazali, trans-
lated into Latin between 1130
and 1150.

1 134. Arnold preaches at Brescia
against the avarice of the
Church.

1135. Birth of Maimonides ;
/Song of Roland written about
this time.

1136. Abelard teaches on Mount
St. Genevieve.

1138. Death of Avempace (Ibn
Badja) and Irnerius.

1 139. Arnold driven from Italy.

1140. Abelard and Arnold con-
demned by Council of Sens
and Pope Innocent II. ; Bogo-
mile books burned at Constan-
tinople.

1141. Hildegard begins to pub-
lish her Revelations.

1142. Death of Abelard, April
21.

1144. Pope deposed by the Ro-
man Republic.

1145. Pope Lucius killed while
attacking the Capitol ; Aboli-
tion of imperial prefecture in
Rome ; Arnold comes there ;
Senate of 50 appointed with
Pierleone as patrician.

1146. Persecution of Jews by
Moors and Germans ; Minna
of Spire tortured to death.

1147. The Second Crusade; Gil-
bert, bishop of Poitiers, ac-
cused of heresy ; Henricians
suppressed in Languedoc.

1148. Henry of Cluny and Eon,

CHRONOLOGY.

419

the Star, imprisoned for life ;
Eon soon dies in prison.

1149. Vacarius lectures on law
at Oxford.

1150. Apostolic Brethren burned
in Cologne ; Peter Lombard's
Sentences published.

1152. Frederic I. becomes em-
peror.

1154. Nicholas Breakspear be-
comes Adrian IV., and puts
Eome under an interdict,
which causes Arnold to be
banished ; accession of Henry
II. in England .

1155. Martyrdom of Arnold di
Brescia at Rome.

1158. Frederic Barbarossa chart-
ers University of Bologna.

1159. Gerard and thirty other
Catharists branded and out-
lawed at Oxford, after which
they starve to death.

1162. Milan destroyed by Fred-
eric Barbarossa.

1163. Arnold and other Cathar-
ists burned at Cologne.

1164. The Constitutions of Clar-
endon.

1165. Catharists burned at Veze-
lay.

1 1 66. Persecution of Catharists
in England.

1167. Catharist Council at St.
Felix de Caraman, near Tou-
louse ; Lombard League form-
ed, and Milan rebuilt.

1170. Becket murdered, Dec. 29;
Peter Waldo begins to preach ;
Birth of Dominic.

1171. Bank opened at Venice.
1176. Frederic Barbarossa de-
feated at Legnano.

1179. Waldenses condemned by
Lateran Council and pope.

1181. Crusade against Viscount
of Beziers.

1182. Birth of Francis of Assisi.

1183. Treaty of Florence assures
the independence of Lombar-
dy ; Waldenses expelled from
Lyons.

1185. Death of Ibn Tophail.

1187. Saladin takes Jerusalem.

1190. Frederic Barbarossa and
Richard of England embark
for Palestine ; Persecution of
the Jews on the Rhine, and
also in England ; The Teutonic
Order founded.

1194. Dec. 26, birth of Frederic
II. ; Pierre Vidal is now writ-
ing against the Church.

1197. Death of Hildegard.

1198. Death of Averroes ; Acces-
sion of Innocent III. ; First
steps toward the inquisition.

1199. John becomes king of En-
gland.

1 200. Amalric teaches Panthe-
ism in University of Paris,
which, like that of Bologna,
has been recently founded.

1 202. Death of Joachim of
Floris.

1203. Constantinople taken by
crusaders.

1204. Death of Maimonides ;
Amalric expelled from his
professorship.

1207. Stedingers put under in-
terdict.

1208. Papal interdict on people
of England ; Peter the Legate
murdered.

1209. First crusade in Langue-
doc ; Massacre of Beziers, July
22 ; Body and followers of
Amalric burned at Paris ; with
them is arrested Pierre of St.
Cloud, an author of Reynard
the Fox ; Franciscan Order
founded.

121 1. Massacre of Lavaur.

1212. Montfort attacks Toulouse;
Eighty Mystics and Waldenses
burned in the Heretics' Trench
at Strasburg ; Frederic II.
makes himself emperor ; Pierre
Cardinal, Figueira and Walter
von der Vogelweide are writing
against the pope.

1213. King John submits to the
pope, May 15 ; King of Arra-
gon and other friends of toler-
ance routed at Muret, Sept. 12.

420

CHRONOLOGY.

1214. Roger Bacon born about
this time.

1215. Lateral Council deposes
the Languedocian princes for
their tolerance, and establishes
auricular confession ; Frederic
crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle ;
Magna Charta granted by John,
Friday, June 15.

1216. Dominican Order founded
by new pope, Honorius III.

1218. June 25, Montfort slain.

1 22 1. Death of Dominic.

1222. University of Padua found-
ed by Frederic.

1224. University of Naples also
founded ; Main action of
Browning's Bordello ; De-
throned Languedocian s re-
stored.

1226. Louis IX. becomes king of
France.

1227. Accession of Gregory IX.,
and excommunication of Fred-
eric.

1228. Death of Walter ; Depart-
ure of Frederic for Pales-
tine.

1229. Frederic gains Jerusalem
and Nazareth for Christendom
by negotiations; Treaty of Paris
gives Languedoc to the crown
of France.

1230. Birth of Rutebceuf ; Fred-
eric freed from the ban.

1231. Pope forbids laymen to
dispute about theology ; Fred-
eric's Sicilian Code.

1233. Dominicans made inquis-
itors ; Conrad of Marburg
murdered.

1234. Defeat of the Stedingers,
May 27.

1239. Frederic again excommu-
nicated.

1240. Many Catharists burned at
.Milan.

1241. French prelates, on their
^ ay to a council, captured by
Pisan fleet at Frederic's re-
quest ; Zurich forbids observ-
ance of an interdict.

1242. Inquisitors mobbed in Mi-

lan, and massacred in Avig-
nonet.

1244. Fall of Monsegur, a Cath-
arist castle in the Pyrenees.

1245. Frederic deposed by Inno-
cent IV. in the Council of
Lyons.

1246. Anti-clerical league of
French barons.

1247. Alleged death of Robin
Hood.

1249. Michael Scott translates
Aristotle.

1250. Pietro of Abano born ;
Death of Frederic, Dec. 13.

1254. Interregnum in Germany
begins, and freedom' advances
in the cities ; Eternal Gospel
and Introduction thereto pub-
lished.

1255. Eternal Gospel suppressed.

1256. William of St. Amour's
Perils of the Last Times pub-
lished and burned.

1257. Bacon imprisoned by Bona-
ventura.

1258. Provisions of Oxford ; Ghi-
bellines expelled from Flor-
ence.

1259. Death of Eccelin the Cruel,
and of King Christopher I. of
Denmark ; The mendicant Or-
ders triumph over the Univer-
sity of Paris.

1260. Florence defeated, and
spared by Farinata ; Rutebceuf
begins to write, and Segarelli
to preach.

1264. Death of Farinata ; Battle
of Lewes won by Leicester over
King Henry III. and Prince
Edward ; Cities and landed
gentry represented in Parlia-
ment.

1265. Leicester defeated and slain
at Evesham ; Birth of Dante.

1266. Manfred defeated and slain
by French invaders of Naples ;
Bacon writes his Great
Work.

1267. Bacon released from prison.

1268. Execution of Conradin,
October 29 ; Pragmatic Sane-

CHRONOLOGY.

421

tion enacted by St. Louis ;
Hanseatic League fully formed.

1269. Death of Pungilovo.

1270. Death of Louis IX. in the
last Crusade.

1272. Bacon writes his Compend
of Philosophy.

1273. Kudolph of Hapsburg be-
comes emperor.

1274. Death of Bonaventura and
Thomas Aquinas.

1275. Statutes of Westminster.

1278. Bacon again imprisoned ;
Jacopone da Todi renounces
the world, and afterwards
writes Stabat Mater.

1279. Nicholas III. orders vow of
poverty to be taken, but not
kept.

1280. Death of Albertus Magnus.

1282. Sicilian Vespers, March 31.

1283. Peter John Oliva begins
to oppose the papacy.

1285. Accession of Philip the
Fair.

1288. Gielee's Renard Renewed
written.

1290. Jews expelled from En-
gland ; Jean de Meung writes
second part of the Romance
of the Rose about this time.

1294. Segarelli imprisoned ; death
of Bacon ; accession of Boni-
face VIII.

1295. Marco Polo returns to
Venice.

1297. Death of Peter John Oliva ;
Great Charter confirmed by
Edward I.

1299. Destruction of the Colon-
nas by Boniface VIII.

1300. Segarelli burned ; Jubilee
at Rome; The name Lollard,
first used at Antwerp; Furi-
ous party strife at Florence.

1301. Pungilovo's body burned
at Ferrara, and Wilhelmina's
at Milan; Eckhart begins to
write about this time; Quarrel
between Philip and Boniface ;
Pope's bull against the king
issued, Dec. 5.

1302. Bull publicly burned at

Paris, Sunday, Feb. 11 ; April
10, Philip sustained in first
meeting ever held of States
General ; Dante banished.

1303. Boniface is arrested, Sat-
urday, Sept. 7 ; Dies a prisoner
in the Vatican, Oct. 11 ; Ber-
nard Delicieux has the dun-
geon of the inquisition at Car-
cassonne broken open by the
royal commissioner.

1304. Burning of one hundred
and fourteen Waldenses at
Paris ; Execution of Wallace,
Aug. 23 ; Benedict XI. leaves
Rome ; Birth of Petrarch.

1305. Dolcino levies open war
against the Church ; Clement
V. crowned at Lyons, Nov. 14.

1306. Death of Jacopone da
Todi.

1307. March 23, day before
Good Friday, Dolcino con-
quered ; He and Margaret
executed soon after ; All the
Templars in France arrested,
Friday, Oct. 11 ; Supposed
conspiracy on the Riitli, Nov.
7, and assassination of Gess-
ler, Nov. 19 or 20.

1308. Jan. 8, English Templars
arrested ; States General con-
demns the Templars, May 1,
as does the pope in his bull en-
titled Faciens Miserieordiam,
Aug. 12.

1309. Pope begins to dwell at
Avignon ; Trial of the Temp-
lars by his commissioners at
Paris begins Aug. 7.

1310. Margaret Porretta burned
at Paris, as also are fifty-four
Templars, for retracting their
previous confessions made
under torture on May 10 ;
Dante's De Monarchia writ-
ten this year or soon after ;
Trial of 'Boniface for heresy
and gross vice at Avignon ;•
Councils of Mainz and Treves
acquit the Templars.

1311. Bull freeing Philip and
other enemies of Boniface

422

CHRONOLOGY.

from censure, April 23 ; Trial
of Templars ends at Paris,
May 26, and a few weeks later
in England, where no one is
executed ; Council of Vienne
opens, Oct. 16.

1312. Local councils at Tarrago-
na and Salamanca acquit the
Templars ; Clement V. an-
nounces the suppression of the
Order with consent of the
Council of Vienne, April 3 ;
Boniface is acquitted.

1313. Birth of Boccaccio; March
11, De Molay, Grand Master
of the Temple, and Guy of
Auvergne, burned at Paris for
retracting confessions.

1314. April 20, Death of Clem-
ent V. and June 25, of Philip;
Bannockburn, June 24 ; Fred-
eric of Austria chosen emperor,
or rather king of the Romans,
Oct. 19, and Louis of Bavaria,
Oct. 20.

1315. Battle of Morgarten, Nov.
16.

1316. Pietro of Abano dies during
trial ; John XXII. chosen pope
after an interregnum, Aug. 7.

1317. Jan 23, doctrine of utter
poverty of Jesus condemned
by the pope ; Bishop of Cahors
burned, as a sorcerer, by the
pope, May 7.

1318. Four Franciscan Mystics
burned at Marseilles, May 7.

1319. Robert Bruce excommuni-
cated ; Bernard Delicieux sen-
tenced to imprisonment for
life, Dec. 6.

1320. Death of Jean de Meung,
who finished the Romance of
the Rose.

1321. Sept. 14, death of Dante
soon after completing the
Divina Commedia.

1322. Chapter of Franciscans at
Perugia sanctions mystical
doctrines, among others that
of Christ's utter poverty, on
"Whitsunday ; Victory of Louis
of Bavaria' at Miihldorf, Sept.

28 ; Mandeville begins his
travels ; Walter, the first Lol-
lard martyr, burned at Co-
logne.

1323. Nov. 12, Perugia proceed-
ings condemned by pope.

1324. Jan. 22, protest of Louis
at Sachsenhausen ; he is ex-
communicated, March 23, and
all places adhering to him are
put, July 11, under an inter-
dict, which is generally disre-
garded in the German cities ;
Marsilius writes his Defender
of Peace ; Wycliffe born about
this time.

1326. Gunpowder used by the
Florentines.

1327. Edward II. deposed by
Parliament.

1328. Flight of Ockham, from
Avignon ; Louis crowned at
Rome, against the orders of
the pope, Sunday, Jan. 17 ;
May 12, Louis has an anti-pope
chosen by the Roman people,
as Nicholas V.

1329. Feb. 19, Louis and Nichol-
as burn Pope John XXII. in
effigy at Pisa.

1331. Pope John XXII. falls into
heresy.

1333. Ordelaffi becomes lord of
Forli.

1334. Dec. 4, death of John
XXII.

1338. Declarations that Germany
is independent of the pope
made on July 16, at Rense, by
the Electors, and on Aug. 6
and Sept. 12, by the Diets of
Frankfort and Coblentz ; At
the latter is present Edward
III. , now the ally of Louis.

1340. Rolle's Prick of Con-
science written ; Death of the
learned Hebrew, Caspi ; Birth
of Chaucer about this time ;
Truce of Tournay mediated by
Countess of Hainault, Jeanne
de Valois.

1341. April 8, Petrarch crowned
at Home.

CHRONOLOGY.

1342. Louis gives a dispensation
for the marriage of his son on
Feb. 10 ; May 7, Clement VI.
chosen pope.

1345. Death of Levi, or Leo,
Gersonides and of Jacob van
Artevelde of Ghent.

1346. Charles IV. set up as rival
of Louis ; Aug. 25, battle of
Cressy, where cannon are said
to have been used.

1347. Death of Louis of Bavaria
and Ockham ; On May 20,
Pentecost, Kienzi liberates
Rome ; Aug. 1, his consecra-
tion as knight of the Holy
Ghost ; Sept. 14, arrest of the
nobles ; Nov. 20, their attack
on Rome repulsed ; Dec. 15,
Rienzi resigns under the ban.

1348. University of Prague
founded ; Nicholas of Autri-
curia condemned at Paris ;
Avignon obtained by Pope
Clement from Joanna of Nap-
les ; The Black Death carries
off nearly half the population
of Italy and France.

1349. The Black Death in En-
gland and Germany ; Tauler
calls on the priests to hold
public worship, despite the in-
terdict.

1350. Second Jubilee at Rome ;
Arrest of Rienzi at Prague, by
Charles IV.

1351. Statute against Pro visors,
or priests recommended for
benefices by the pope, passed
in England.

1352. Rienzi in prison at Avig-
non; Death of Clement, Dec. 6.

I353- Statute of Praemunire
passed by Parliament to pre-
vent appeals to the pope ; Pub-
lication of the Decameron by
Boccaccio.

1356. The Golden Bull, making
emperors independent of popes,
issued by Charles IV. ; The
Last Age of the Church pub-
lished in England ; University
of Heidelberg founded.

1357. Marzia Ordelaffi defends
Cesena against Cardinal Al-
bornoz ; The seige begins in
April ; She surrenders, June
21 ; Fitzralph, archbishop of
Armagh, argues against Men-
dicant Friars, before the pope
and cardinals.

1358. Insurrection of French
peasants, the Jacquerie.

1360. Greek taught at Florence
by Leo Pilatus ; Death of
Fitzralph under surveillance at
Avignon ; Wycliffe, master of
Baliol, publishes a translation
of the Gospels in his Com-
mentary.

1361. Death of Tauler.

1362. Death of Vidal of Nar-
bonne, the Jewish rationalist ;
Composition of Langland's
Vision of Piers Plowman this
year or 1363.

1363. Birth of Christine de Pisan
and Gerson.

1364. University of Cracow
founded.

1365. University of Vienna
founded ; Urban V. demands
tribute of England ; Dec. 9,
Wycliffe becomes warden of
Canterbury Hall ; John Ball
begins to preach.

1366. Papal Claim rejected by
Parliament.

1367. New warden of Canterbury
appointed before March 31.

1368' Milicz imprisoned at
Rome, where he has preached
reform ; Wycliffe On Dominion
published ; University of Gen-
eva founded.

1369. Urban V. returns to
Rome ; Birth of John Huss on
July 6, this year or 1373.

1370. Bastile built and Theolo-
yia Germanica written.

1371. Parliament taxes clergy,
and excludes prelates from
office ; Wycliffe made D.D. at
Oxford.

1373. Joan of Aubenton burned.

1374. Wycliffe one of seven

424

CHRONOLOGY.

ambassadors to meet
envoys at Bruges.

1375. Death of Boccaccio ; New
College founded at Oxford ;
Florence sends out in Decem-
ber an army, with "Liberty"
on its banners, against the
pope, from whom 80 towns
and cities revolt.

1376. Bishop of London retracts
at Paul's Cross his publication
of the pope's bull against Flor-
ence ; The Good Parliament
denounces sale of bishoprics,
bad appointments, and other
extortions by the pope, whose
collectors are threatened with
death.

1377. Langland publishes the
second edition of the Vision;
Jan. 17, Cesena sacked by the
pope's soldiers and 5000 citi-
zens murdered ; Thursday, Feb.
19, Wycliffe's trial in St. Paul's
Cathedral brings on a riot ;
May 22, five bulls against him ;
That fall his advice is asked by
Parliament, and given against
letting money go to Rome ;
Nicholas of Basel builds a re-
treat, between that city and
Constance, for the Friends of
God.

I3?8. Wy cliff e tried at Lambeth
in Feb. or March, for saying
that the State may disendow
the Church, that the Gospel is
a sufficient guide, and that
papal censures are not valid
unless in harmony with the
Bible ; Urban VI. chosen, April
9, and Clement VII. Sept. 20,
causing the Great Schism.

1379. Urban takes castle of St.
Angelo from Clement's officers ;
Wycliffe sends out his itiner-
ants, the Poor Priests ; Un-
popular poll tax in England.

1380. Wycliffe translating the
New Testament.

1381. Revolt against taxation in
Essex in Mny, ;ilso in Kent on
June !>, when Walter the Tyler

kills a collector ; June 13, the
rioters reach London ; John
Ball is freed from prison ; and
the archbishop of Canterbury
beheaded ; Walter is killed on
Saturday, the 17th ; the rioters
disperse under promise of par-
don, which is broken ; John
Ball hung, July 15, and many
others that summer and fall ;
Parliament forbids education
of the poor ; and orders all
sheriffs to swear to suppress
Lollardism, as was actually
done until 1626 ; Wy cliff e's
opposition to transubstantia-
tion condemned at Oxford.

1382. Wycliffe's views generally
condemned by the Earthquake
Council, May 17 ; Many of his
preachers silenced under a pre-
tended Act of Parliament ; His
New Testament finished in
June as well as parts of the Old.

1383. Nicholas of Basel burned.

1384. Death of Wycliffe, Dec. 31 ;
His Bible finished.

1385. Wycliffe's writings known
in Bohemia.

1386. University of Heidelberg
founded ; Battle of Sernpach,
July 9 ; Five cardinals mur-
dered by Urban VI., Dec. 15.

1387. Margaret becomes Queen-
of Denmark.

1388. Wycliffe's Bible published ;
Margaret conquers Sweden ;
Battle of Falkioping ; Bech
burned in Piedmont i'or assert-
ing the right of Christians to
take interest.

1389. Compact of Nuremberg
between emperor and princes
against the Jews.

. 1390. Massacre of Jews in Seville ;
Pope's collector pronounced a
public enemy in England; Birth
of Pecock; Rights of the people
to the Bible in their own
tongue asserted by Lancaster
in Parliament ; Bible as revised
by Purvey published.
1392. Statute against Provisors,

CHRONOLOGY.

425-

or papal nominees, passed by
Parliament ; University of Er-
furt founded.

1393. Gerson chancellor of Uni-
versity of Paris.

1394. The University of Paris
tells the king, Jan. 25, that
both popes should resign, or a
General Council be convoked ;
Death of Bohemian reformer,
Janovius.

1395. Those Mystics and Wal-
denses, known in common
as Winkelers, persecuted at
Mainz ; Lollards, now at their
strongest, petition against the
temporal power, auricular con-
fession, etc.

1397. Chrysolaras teaches Greek,
and John of Ravenna Latin
at Florence ; Union of Cal-
mar.

1398. The pope besieged at Avig-
non.

1399. Christine de Pisan begins to
write ; Huss defends some of
"Wycliffe's views at Prague ;
Richard II. deposed, Sept. 29.

1400. Birth of Gutenberg; Death
of Chaucer, Oct. 25 ; The Vis-
ion of the Orchard written ;
Purvey recants and dies in
prison soon after ; The Noble
Lesson written by a Walden-
sian ; That sect persecuted at
the Christmas of Pragela.

1401. Sautre burned Feb. 24 ;
Statute de Hcereticis Coiribur-
endis passed in March ; De Ru-
ina Ecclesice written ; A bank
at Barcelona.

1402. Huss preaches at Bethle-
hem Chapel.

1403. WyclinVs views con-
demned at Prague ; Ghiberti.
begins his gates.

1405. Huss exposes false mira-
cles ; Guarino of Verona re-
turns from Constantinople,
where he has learned Greek,
and brings many manuscripts ;
Other Italians do the same, and
many learned Greeks come to

Italy during this century ;
Many Mss. discovered .

1406. Birth of Valla ; Death of
Salutato ; Wood cuts in use.

1407. Risby, a Lollard, burned in
Scotland ; Bank of Genoa
opened.

1408. Pope's bull torn up by or-
der of the States General of
France.

1409. Circulation of Bible in
England forbidden by Convo-
cation ; Huss deprives his ad-
versaries, the Germans at
Prague, of the control of the
university ; They secede, and
found that of Leipsic ; Council
of Pisa, March 25 to Aug. 7 ;
Its supremacy declared May
29.

1410. Badby burned, Feb. 21 ;
Accession of John XXIII. May
17 ; July 16, 200 Wycliffite
books burned at Prague ; On
the 18th, Huss is excommuni-
cated, after which he defies the
pope ; Oil painting invented
about this time by Van Eyck.

1411. University of St. Andrews
founded.

1412. Birth of Joan of Arc about
this time ; Death of Queen
Margaret ; Christine de Pisan
writes her Book of Peace ; Sale
of indulgencies to help crusade
against Naples opposed by
Huss and Jerome on June 7 ;
The pope's bull of indulgencies
burned by the students, June
24 ; Three Hussite mechanics
beheaded, July 11.

1413. Huss writes De Ecclesia in
retirement ; Oldcastle on trial,
Sept. 25.

1414. Secular courts in England
empowered to convict here-
tics ; November 5, Council of
Constance opens ; Huss arrives
on the 3d, and is arrested on
the 28th.

1415. The Council declares its
superiority to the pope on
March 29 and April 6, and de-

426

CHRONOLOGY.

poses John XXIII. , then under
arrest, on May 29 ; Gregory
forced to abdicate, July 4 ;
Huss burned, July 6 ; Agin-
court, Oct. 25.

1416. Jerome of Prague burned
May 30.

1417. Utraquism established at
Prague, March 7 ; Benedict
VIII. deposed, July 26, at Con-
stance, where apian for future
councils at regular intervals is
adopted, Oct. 9 ; Oldcastle
burned, Dec. 14.

1418. Council of Constance closes,
April 22.

1419. Zizka a rioter at Prague,
Sunday, July 30.

1420. Victories of Zizka over
Sigismund ; Brunelleschi labor-
ing on Cathedral of Florence ;
Winkelers banished from
Strasburg ; Poggio visits En-
gland in search of manuscripts;
Battle on Zizka's Mountain,
July 14 ; The Four Articles.

1421. Sigismund driven out of
Bohemia ; Zizka persecutes op-
ponents of transubstantiation
and Adamites.

1424. The Bloody Year of Civil
War in Bohemia ; Waldenses
and Mystics burned at Worms.

1425. Scotch law against Lol-
lards ; The Imitation of Christ
written about this time.

1426. Waldenses and Mystics
burned at Spire ; Victory of
Procopius at Aussig, Sunday,
June 16.

1427. Death of Purvey.

1428. Hussites invade Austria
and Bavaria ; Joan of Arc an-
nounces her mission.

1429. She relieves Orleans, May
6 and 7, wins battle of Patay,
June 18, ami has hrr king
crowned at Khcinis, Sunday,
July 17, but fails in Septem-
ber, at Paris; Death of Gerson,
July 12.

1430. May 24, Joan of Arc taken
prisoner; Printing with wooden

types said to have been in-
vented by Koster at Haarlem.

1431. Feb. 21, first hearing of
Joan of Arc by her judges ;
Rcrt'intation, May 24 ; Execu-
tion, Tuesday, May 30 ; Aug.
27, Council of Basel opens ;
Hussites invited in October ;
Jack Sharp's insurrection.

1432. Sunday, Jan. 4, Hussite
leaders enter Basel, where the
Council declares itself indissol-
uble, April 29.

*433- The Orphans reach the
Baltic ; In November, the en-
voys of the Council announce
to the Diet of Prague, that the
use of the cup will be permitted
to all Christians in Bohemia
and Moravia.

1434. Death of Villena, also of
Procopius in battle of Lipan,
May 30.

1436. Gutenberg makes metal
types ; Peace of Iglau, July 5,
ends Hussite war ; Raymond
of Sabieude teaching at Tou-
louse.

1438. Pragmatic Sanction of
Bourges ; Council at Ferrara
and Florence.

1439. June 25, Pope Eugenius
deposed at Basel ; Felix made
anti-pope, Nov. 5.

1443. Valla exposes the False
Donation about this time.

1444. Pecock becomes bishop of
St. Asaph ; Nicholas, of Cusa,
writes a book asserting the
motion of the earth.

1447. Nicholas V. elected ; Ghi-
berti's gates finished.

1448. Council driven from Basel;
Poggio writes against hypoc-
risy.

1449. May 7, the Council dis-
solves at Lausanne ; Nicholas
V. persecutes Mystics at An-
cona.

1450. Jack Cade's rebellion; Type
cast at Mainz; Death of Pletho;
Papal jubilee stirs up Wrscl to
write against indulgencies ;

CHRONOLOGY.

427

Copper-plate engraving in-
vented.

1451. Isotta, of Verona, argues
publicly that Adam was more
to blame than Eve.

1452. Tabor captured ; Birth of
Leonardo da Vinci and Savon-
arola ; Kescue of a heretic at
Bologna.

I453- Conspiracy of Porcaro ;
Fall of Constantinople, May 29.

1455. First battle in Wars of the
Roses, May 23 ; Mazarin Bible
printed now or earlier ; Birth
of Reuchlin.

1456. Condemnation of Joan of
Arc revoked by pope, July 7.

1457. Death of Valla ; Pecock,
now bishop of Chichester, re-
cants publicly on Sunday,
Dec. 4.

1458. Waldenses and Mystics
burned at Strasburg ; Pius II.
elected, Aug. 19.

1459. Death of Poggio ; Birth of
Celtes.

1460. Wesel begins to preach.

1461. Heimburg excommunicated
and exiled.

1462. Sept. 16, birth of Pompo-
natius.

1463. King of Bohemia excom-
municated .

1464. Felix Hemmerlein dies in
prison about this time ; Acces-
sion of Paul II., first of five
peculiarly wicked popes who
reigned until 1513 ; Death of
Nicholas of Cusa.

1466. Birth of Erasmus, this
year or the next.

1467. Death of Gutenberg.

1468. Pope persecutes Roman
Academy.

1469. May 3, birth of Machia-
velli ; Death of Filippo Lippi.

1470. Boccaccio's Decameron
printed ; Flanders at the
height of prosperity ; Great
activity of printing during rest
of century, especially at
Venice.

1471. Birth of Albert Diirer ;

Death of Thomas a Kempis ;
Vernias begins to preach Aver-
roism at Padua ; Bible printed
in Italian at Venice; Tolerance
in Italy until 1542.

1472. Da Vinci's Medusa ; Birth
of Cranach and Mutianus ;
Death of Heimburg.

1473. Feb. 19, birth of Coperni-
cus ; Lucretius published ; Ex-
ecution of Lollards.

1474. Isabella begins to reign ;
Louis XI. tries to suppress
University of Paris ; First En-
glish book, Caxton's Game of
Chess, printed.

1475. Birth of Angelo, March 6 ;
Platonic Academy founded ;
Persecution in Piedmont.

1476. Hans Boheim, the peasant
prophet and rebel, burned ;
Swiss conquer at Granson and
Morat. '

1477. Charles the Bold con-
quered and slain at Nancy ;
Marriage of Caterina Sforza ;
Birth of Titian.

1478. Conspiracy of the Pazzi at
Florence ; Geiler begins to
preach at Strasburg ; Maillard
protected by women against
Louis XI.

1479. Trial of "Wesel begins
Thursday, Feb. 11.

1480. Birth of Thomas More ;
Inquisition introduced into
Spain ; Birth of Gringoire
(possibly earlier) ; Cassandra
Fidele defends Averroism ;
Leonardo da Vinci enters serv-
ice of Sultan of Egypt, (now
or possibly later).

1481. Pulci's Morgante pub-
lished.

1482. Wesel dies in prison ; Car-
niola calls for a council at
Basel, July 13 ; Savonarola be-
gins to preach ; Birth of (Eco-
lompadius ; Ficino's transla-
tion of Plato printed.

1483. Birth of Raphael, April 6;
Of Rabelais, soon after, and of
Luther, Nov. 10.

428

CHRONOLOGY.

1484. Birth of Zwingli ; Great in-
dependence shown by States
General at Tours.

1485. Death of Fra Angelico ;
End of AVars of the Roses.

1486. Pico's nine hundred
theses ; Cape of Good Hope
discovered ; An Encyclopaedia
published ; Birth of Cornelius
Agrippa.

1488. Birth of Hutten and An-
drea del Sarto ; Death of Car-
niola in prison.

1489. Savonarola begins to
preach in Florence ; Birth of
Vischer and Cranmer ; Death
of Wesel, Oct. 14.

1490. Birth of Vittoria Colonna
and David Lyndsay; A German
Bible published; Other versions
in this and other languages be-
fore 1517.

1491. Birth of Bucer.

1492. Conquest of Granada ; A
million Arab Mss. burned ;
America discovered, Friday,
Oct. 12 ; Birth of Vives and
Aretin ; Accession of Alexan-
der VI., Aug. 11.

1493. Birth of Paracelsus.

1494. Brandt's Ship of Fools
published ; Persecution at
Glasgow ; Death of Pico di
Mirandola; Florence becomes
a Republic under the direction
of Savonarola ; First book on
algebra and geometry.

1495. Savonarola invited to
Rome, July 25 ; Birth of Hol-
bein ; Pomponatius begins to
teach at Padua.

1496. Birth of Berni ; Works of
Raymond of Sabieude and Lu-
cian published ; The J//7/ry
played at Paris ; Jesus College
founded at Cambridge in ]>lace
of a nunnery, suppressed for
profligacy.

1497. North America discovered
by the Cabots ; Birth of Me-
lanchthon, Feb. 16 ; First bon-
fire of vanities made by
Savonarola, who is excommu-

nicated, May 12 ; Michael An-
gelo's Cupid and Bacchus.

1498. Savonarola's ordeal April
7, and execution, May 23; Vas-
co di Gama reaches India ;
Louis XII. begins to reign, arid
favors free speech ; Leonardo
da Vinci finishes his Last Sup-
per ; Diirer illustrates Revela-
tion.

1499. Death of Ficino ; Recanta-
tion of Vernias.

1500. Raphael's first Madonna ;
The Adages of Erasmus pub-
lished ; Peasant victory at
Hemmingstadt, Feb. 17 ; Jubi-
lee and sale of indulgencies in
all Catholic lands.

1501. Birth of Cardan; The
Christian Warrior, by Eras-
mus, published.

1502. Toleration of AValdenses at
Frassiniere ; Moors banished;
University of Wittenberg
founded ; Caterina Sforza con-
quered by Caesar Borgia; Ryss-
wick imprisoned.

1503. Death of Alexander VI.,
August 18; Accession of Julius
II., November 1.

1504. The Mona Lisa and Battle
of the Standard finished ; Val-
la's Annotations published by
Erasmus ; More in Parliament;
Death of Isabella.

1505. Reuchlin's Hebrew Grain-
mar and Dictionary pub-
lished ; Birth of Knox; Bebel's
Triumph of Venus published ;
Wimpheling attacked for show-
ing that Augustine did not
found the Order, which Luther
now joins.

1506. Bramante begins to rebuild
St. Peters; Birth of Buchanan;
Bebel's Facetice published.

1507. Michael Angelo begins to
paint the Sistine Chapel.

1508. Birth of Telesius and Alva;
Death of Celtes ; The School of
Athens.

1509. Birth of Servetus, Calvin,
(.\rsalpinus and Dolet; Pfeffer-

CHRONOLOGY.

429

torn tries to destroy Hebrew
literature; Accession, April 22,
of Henry VIII., who marries
Catherine of Arragon, June
3.

1510. Balboa discovers the Pa-
cific ; More translates Pico's
Life of Savonarola; Grin-
goire's Hope of Peace, and
Chasse du Cerf des Cerfs, pub-
lished ; Pope's Holy League
against France ; Council of
Tours, afterwards Pisa; Death
of Geiler.

1511. Raphael's Parnassus ;
Council of Pisa ; Luther in
Rome.

1512. " Perdam Babylonis No-
men ;" Papal interdict on
France ; Colet's sermon on
clerical corruption, February
6 ; Erasmus's Praise of Folly
published.

1513. Accession of Leo X., March
11 ; Celtes' Odes and the Ju-
lius Exclusus published;
Averroism condemned by La-
teran Council, Dec. 19; Reuch-
lin tried for heresy.

1514. Reuchlin acquitted at
Spire.

1515. Birth of Ramus and Cas-
tallio ; Raphael's cartoons;
Wolsey cardinal and chan-
cellor; Lateran Council forbids
unlicensed printing; Accession
of Francis I. ; Cornelius
Agrippa writes his Occult Phil-
osophy and Nobility of Wo-
man ; Luther begins to preach.

1516. Luther's edition of the
TJieologia Oermanica, those of
the Greek Testament and Je-
rome by Erasmus, the latter's
Christian Prince, Ariosto's
Orlando Furioso, Pompona-
tius On Immortality, More's
Utopia and the Letters of Ob-
scure Men published ; Machia-
velli writes the Prince, and
presents it to Lorenzo dei
Medici.

1517. Luther attacks the sale of

indulgencies in his Tlieses, Oct.
31 ; Hutten prints his satire on
the Duke of Wiirtemberg.

1518. Luther appeals from the
pope to a general council;
Zwingli attacks indulgencies, as
does Erasmus in his Colloquies,
now printed surreptitiously ;
Sistine Madonna painted.

1519. Zwingli begins to preach at
Zurich, Jan. 1 ; Charles ,V.
elected emperor, June 28 ; Lu-
ther begins, July 4, a dispute
with Eck, wherein he gives up
the authority of councils as
well as popes ; Paraphrase on
Corinthians by Erasmus pub-
lished ; Cortes conquers Mexi-
co; Death of Leonardo da Vin-
ci.

1520. Reuchlin condemned at
Rome, Jan. 23 ; Luther excom-
municated, June 16 ; his Ap-
peal to the German Nobility
published in August ; The bull
burned, Nov. 10; He writes and
prints one hundred and thirty-
three books and pamphlets this
year ; Magellan enters the Pa-
cific, November 28 ; Cornelius
Agrippa driven from Metz;
Pomponatius writes against
miracles; Death of Raphael.

1521. April 18, Diet of Worms,
after which Luther is carried
to the Wartburg ; Controversy
between him and Henry VIII. ;
Luther writes on Christian
Liberty; Erasmus's Colloquies
published with his consent, also
his Paraphrase of Matthew ;
Loyola becomes a monk ; Las
Casas fails to found a philan-
thropic colony ; Death of Leo
X., Dec. 1.

1522. March 7, Luther returns to
Wittenberg and puts down the
fanatics there ; His New Testa-
ment published in September,
in which month Sickingen at-
tacks Treves ; Death of Reuch'
lin, June 30 ; Platonic Acad-
emy at Florence suppressed.

430

CHRONOLOGY.

1523. Jan. 13, Diet of Nurem-
berg protests against violence
to Luther; Death of Sickingen,
May 7, and Hutten, Aug. 29 ;
Rabelais imprisoned ; Four
Lutherans burned at Antwerp,
July 1 ; Luther opposes perse-
cution of Jews ; Sweden liber-
ated from Denmark by Gus-
tavus Vasa ; New Testament
published in French.

1524. Schwenckfeld begins to
point out immoral tendencies
of Lutheranism ; Three of Diir-*
er's pupils banished from Nur-
emberg for disbelief in tran-
substantiation and the Bible ;
Utopia translated into Ger-
man ; controversy of Luther
and Erasmus on the Will ;
Carlstadt driven from Orla-
miinde by Luther, who says :
" Reason is the Devil's harlot,
and can do nothing but blas-
pheme ; " The Theologaster
first acted at Paris; Anabap-
tists burned at Augsburg and
Vienna; Peasants rise near
Basel, August 24 ; Birth of
Camoens and Palestrina ; New
Testament translated into
Danish.

1525. General rising of peasants,
Sunday, April 2 ; Weinsberg
massacre the 17th, after which
Luther denounces the rebels ;
Miinzer defeated at Franken-
hausen, and Gotz at Wiirzburg,
May 15 ; Death of Pomponati-
us, May 18 ; Luther's marriage,
June 11 ; Erasmus attacks the
confessional ; Paracelsus re-
turns to Germany.

1526. J )oath of Mutianus Ruf us,
May 30 ; Diet of Spire decrees
in June, that each state may
choose its own religion ; Dolet
studies at Padua; Paracelsus,
professor at Basel, where he
burns Galen, Avicenna, etc. ;
Erasmus places marriage alxne
celibacy ; Airrippa writes on
the Uncerfnui.fi/ and Vanity

of the Arts and Sciences ; The
New Testament published in
Swedish and Tyndal's in En-
glish, and the whole Bible in
Dutch.

1527. Felix Mantz drowned at
Zurich for Anabaptist views,
Jan. 5; Rome captured by Im-
perialists, May 6 ; Denck and
other Anti-trinitarians ban-
ished from Strasburg ; A hund-
red of their followers beheaded
in Baden ; Seventy Baptists
burned in the Tyrol ; Univer-
sity of Marburg founded ; sale
of 24,000 copies of the Collo-
quies of Erasmus ; Death of
Machiavelli.

1528. Paracelsus driven from
Basel where Denck dies of the-
plague ; Hamilton, first re-
former in Scotland, burned ;
Seventy Anabaptists beheaded
in Bavaria ; Death of Albert
Diirer ; Schwenckfeld banished
from Silesia.

1529. Hetzer beheaded, Feb. 4,
at Constance ; Protestants-
gain their name at Spire,
April 25 ; Marburg conference,
Oct. 1 ; Wolsey's fall, Oct. 18;
Bassen beheaded at Basel ;
Agrippa's Nobility of Woman,
and Bunderlin's books pub-
lished.

1530. Confession of Augsburg
presented June 25 ; Suppres-
sion of German Protestants
decreed, Nov. 19 ; Faber's
Bible in French, and Agrippa's
Uncertainty and Vanity of
the Arts and Sciences pub-
lished ; Copernicus finishes his
great book ; Rabelais studying
medicine ; Alliance of Hesse
and Zurich ; Campanus im-
prisoned in Saxony ; Zurich
decrees that heresy is a capital
crime; Death of Andrea del
Sarto, Wolsey, and Sannazaro;
Birth of La Boetie.

1531. Death of Zwingli in battle,
Oct. 11 ; Servetus publishes

CHRONOLOGY.

431

his Errors of the Trinity, as
Vives does his Causes of the
Corruption of Learning, and
Franck his Universal History
for which he has to leave
Strasburg ; Bainham arrested ;
Schmalkald League formed.

1532. Bainham burned ; Servetus
publishes his Dialogue and
takes refuge in France ; Hoff-
mann imprisoned at Strasburg;
Private marriage of Henry
VIII. with Anne Boleyn ;
Publication of Franck's Prov-
erbs, Machiavelli's Prince,
and Brucci oil's Bible in Italian.

1533. Montaigne born ; What is
now the second book of Gar-
gantua and Pantagruel pub-
lished ; Geneva revolts against
her bishop.

1534. Franck's Paradoxes pub-
lished ; Anabaptists appear at
Miinster and Libertines in
France, where the Jesuits or-
ganize; Parliament makes Hen-
ry VIII. head of the Church ;
Claudius banished from Bern ;
Dolet imprisoned at Toulouse
for denouncing persecution ;
Burning of heretics resumed at
Paris, Nov. 10; Luther's Bible
published ; Protestant con-
quest of Wiirtemberg ; Las
Casas writes against persecu-
tion.

I535- Jan. 13, bookselling and
publishing made capital crimes
in France, by an edict, modi-
fied Feb. 24 ; Sir Thomas
More beheaded July 6 ; Ana-
baptists burned .in England,
but tolerated in Moravia until
1547 ; Their reign at Miinster
ends June 23 ; Bucer's book
advocating slaying heretics
with their wives and children
published, also Coverdale's and
Olivetan's Bibles, Ludovici's
Triumph of Charlemagne,
Servetus's edition of Ptolemy,
and the first book of Gargan-
, tua and Pantagruel ; Death

of Cornelius Agrippa ; Marot
takes refuge in Italy ; Geneva
becomes Protestant, and Bon-
nivard is liberated from Chil-
lon.

1536. Deaths of Erasmus, Berni,
and Tyndal, last burned Oct.
6 ; Fourteen Anabaptists burn-
ed in England ; Three behead-
ed at Jena, with Melanch-
thon's approval ; Synod of
Homburg, Hesse, on Aug. 7,
approves of capital punishment
for heresy ; Three hundred
and seventy-six monasteries
suppressed in England ; Kamus
holds a discussion against au-
thority of Aristotle ; Menno
organizes a peaceable sect of
Baptists ; Agrippa's Occult
Philosophy, Calvin's Institutes,
Dolet's Studies of Latin Lit-
erature, and Cardan's Bad
Practices of Modern Doctors
published.

1537. Desperrier's Cymbal, Man-
zolli's Zodiac of Life, and
John Kogers' Bible published ;
Vesalius becomes professor at
Padua.

1538. Franck's Chronicle of Ger-
many and Golden Ark pub-
lished as is Lyndsay's Papingo.
Dolet, bookseller and publisher
at Lyons ; Luther advises ban-
ishing dissenters from Ger-
many.

1539. Birth of Faustus Socinus ;
Franck banished from Ulm ;
Great Bible printed ; Remain-
ing monasteries suppressed in
England ; Six Articles enacted
against Protestants ; Freedom
of the press established in
Poland.

1540. Hoffman dies in prison ;
Death of Guicciardini ; Serve-
tus goes to Vienne ; Order of
Jesuits sanctioned ; Lyndsay's
Three Estates acted ; Bishop
Stencho publishes a book
showing that all philosophers
held the true religion ; Osi*

-432

CHRONOLOGY.

ander writes against persecu-
ting Jews.

1541. Death of Paracelsus and
Carlstadt ; Calvin returns to
Geneva ; Berni's Orlando, and
the Latin version of the Bible
with rationalistic notes by Ser-
vetus published.

.1542. Dolet sentenced to death,
Oct. 2 ; Death of Contarini ;
Las Casas prevented from pub-
lishing his Ruin of the Indies ;
Inquisition revived ; Occhino
and other Protestants flee from
Italy ; Joris publishes his Won-
der Book.

1543. Publication of the attacks
of Vesalius on Galen, of Ramus
on Aristotle, and of Coperni-
cus on the Ptolemaic system ;
Death of Copernicus ; Dolet re-
leased, but rearrested ; Luther
writes against the Jews.

1544. Deaths of Desperriers, by
suicide, Marot, and Margaret
of Navarre ; Ramus sentenced
to silence, March 1 ; Protest-
ants who call God the author
of evil banished from the Gri-
sons ; Castalio has to leave
Geneva ; Calvin writes against
the Libertines ; Joris comes,
under a feigned name, to
Basel ; Birth of Tassp.

1545. Vaudois persecution, April;
Council of Trent opens Dec.
13 ; Publication of Cardan's
Algebra, and of the third book
of Gargantua and Panta-
gruel; Birth of Andrew Mel-
ville ; Death of Sebastian
Franck.

1546. Calvin writes Farel, Feb. 7,
that Servetus shall never quit
Geneva alive ; Death of Luther,
Feb. 18 ; Protestants defeated
at MTihlherg, April 24 ; Chapius
imprisoned, April 27, for call-
ing his son Claude, and not
Abraham ; Sale of Bible in
English forbidden, July 8 ;
Anne Ascue burned, July 16,
and Dolet, Aug. 3, when he is

thirty-eight; Index of Pro-
hibited Books made at Lou-
vain ; Society of Unitarians
meets at Vicenza, and this
view is also taught in Poland.

1547. Knox in penal servitude
on a French galley; Conspiracy
of Fiesco, Jan. 2 ; Accession of
Edward VI., Jan. 28; Gruet
arrested for tolerant views at
Geneva, June 28, sentenced
Sunday, July 25, and beheaded
the 26th ; Fourth book of Gar-
gantua and Pantagruel pub-
lished ; Rabelais leaves France
temporarily ; Koran printed at
Venice and suppressed by pope ;
Buchanan imprisoned at Coim-
bra ; Thamer offers to show
immoral tendencies of Luther-
anism in public discussion, but
is forbidden ; Death of Francis

1. ; Birth of Cervantes.

1548. Accession of the tolerant
Sigismund II. in Poland, where
he reigns until 1572 ; Trissino's
Italy Liberated and an Italian
version of the Utopia pub-
lished ; Tiziano recants ra-
tionalism in the Grisons, and
Ashton Unitarian ism at Lon-
don ; Birth of Giordano Bruno ;
La Boe'tie writes his Involun-
tary Servitude.

1549. Thamer banished from
Hesse, Aug. 15 ; The Book of
Common Prayer and Gessner's
History of Animals published.

1550. Joan Bocher burned, May

2, and Gruet's Ms. May 23 ;
Death of Alciati ; Unbelief in
Christianity discovered in En-
gland ; Bible published in Dan-
ish, and Utopia in French.

1551. Van Paris burned ; Renato
recants, Jan. 19 ; Bolsec at-
tacks predestination, Friday,
Oct. 16, and is banished Dec.
22 ; His friend, Bourgogno,
pleads in vain, on Nov. 9, that
"Free speech ought to be per-
mitted to all Christians ; "
Spifame's Royal Decisions, the

CHRONOLOGY.

433

Utopia in English, Cardan's
Subtilty of Things, Castalio'
Bible in Latin with a daring
preface, and Dumoulin's Ex-
posure of Papal Abuses, pub-
lished.

1552. Feb. 19, Rabelais resigns
his benefices ; Gryphius be-
headed ; The forty-two, after-
wards thirty -nine Articles pub-
lished ; Castalio professor at
Basel ; Lutheranism restored
to power by Maurice of
Saxony.

1553. Death of Rabelais ; Acces-
sion of Mary, July 6 ; Birth of
Spenser ; Vergerio banished
from the Grisons for favoring
tolerance, and Robert le Moine,
on July 27, from Geneva, for
disbelief in. hell and in the
Bible; Servetus publishes his
Restoration of Christianity, is
betrayed by Calvin to the in-
quisition, which arrests him,
April 4 ; He escapes, is burned
in effigy, June 17, arrested at
Geneva, Sunday, Aug. 13,
argues with Calvin against
capital punishment for heresy,
Sept. 1, and is burned on
Friday, Oct. 27 ; Gribaldi re-
monstrates in vain.

1554. Publication of censures of
the murder of Servetus by
Occhino, Lyncurt, Renato, Bol-
sec, and Castalio, the last
under the name of Martin
Bellius ; Minos Celso writes a
book to the same effect, pub-
lished 1584, and Zurkinden of
Bern a private letter to Calvin ;
Similar sentiments are ex-
pressed by Lselius Socinus, Cel-
larius, professor at Basel, Ver-
gerio, and many other Protest-
ants ; Birth of Hooker ; Many
Free-willers and Arians ar-
rested in England ; Pereira's
Margarita, an attack on Aris-
totle, and Las Casas's Destruc-
tion of the Indies published.

1555. Accession of Philip II. in

the Netherlands and of the
intolerant pope, Paul IV.;
Gribaldi banished from Geneva,
and Foncelet, author of a poem
against Calvin, from Bern ;
Persecution in England begins
as Rogers is burned, Feb. 4 ;
Castalio's French Bible pub-
lished ; Death of Lyndsay, and
on April 12, of Queen Juana ;
Peace of Augsburg, Sept. 25.

1556. Pomponatius On Miracles,
and Poynet's Political Power
published ; Death of Loyola
and Joris ; Robert King on
trial for saying, "It is not
lawful to put a man to death
for conscience's sake ; " Charles
V. resigns the crown of Spain
to Philip II.

1557. Thamer goes over to Rome
about this time ; A Frenchman
banished from Geneva, Nov.
28, for thinking nothing of the
Gospel ; Philip II. makes peace
with the pope.

1558. Accession of Elizabeth,
Nov. 18 ; Lyndsay 's Dreme,
Queen Margaret's Hepta-
meron, and Knox's Blast
against the Monstrous Regi-
ment of Women published ;
Blandrata and Gentilis leave
Geneva, where four hundred
people are punished, this year
and the next, for dancing,
laughing in church, etc.

1559. Peace of Cateau Cambresis
unites France and Spain against
Protestantism, April 2 ; Joris
found to have called himself
Christ David ; His books and
bones burned at Basel, May 13 ;
Knox preaches in Edinburgh ;
Riot in Rome against the in-
quisition ; First Huguenot
synod at Paris.

1560. Birth of Sully and Armi-
nius; Reformation established
in Scotland by her parliament,
Aug. 24 ; Speech of L'Hopital
to the States General in favor
of toleration, Dec. 13.

INDEX.

Abelard, Peter, origin of name, .
144 ; philosophy, 144, 145 ; mar-
riage, 146, 147 ; persecutions
for rationalism, 147-152 ; death,
153.

Abubacer, Moslem Mystic, 156.

Academy, Florentine, 276, 279 ;
Plato's, 28 ; Roman, 279.

Acquasparto, orthodox Franciscan,
219.

Adamites, heretical Mystics, 255.

Adrian IV., Pope, 142.

JEnesidcmus, a Skeptic, 37.

^Eschylus, represents Jupiter as the
oppressor of mankind, 7, 41.

Afer, Domitius, a witty Roman
orator, 64 .

Agincourt, a peasant victory, 304.

Agnosticism, of Melissus, 5 ; of
Protagoras, 14 ; of Galen, 91 ;
of Ockham, 234 ; of Nicholas
of Autricuria, 235 ; misrepre-
sented, 398.

Agobard, Bishop, writes against
witchcraft and ordeals, 129.

Agrippa, Cwnelius, philosophy,

313 ; on the Nobility of Women,

314 ; on errors of his age, 339,
375.

Agrippina, as a politician, 77.

Ailly, d\ bishop and afterwards
cardinal, inspires Columbus,
182 ; at council of Pisa, 257 ;
at council of Constance, 259.

Alamanni, skeptical poet, 357.

Albigenses, see Catharists, also 135.

Albornoz, Cardinal, sacks Cesena,
236.

Alcffius, banished for teaching Epi-
cureanism, 49.

Alciati, on astrology and witch- |
craft, 351.

Alcibiades, persecuted, 9, 10.

Aldine press, 292.

Alencon, Duke of, 263.

Alexander, of Aphrodisias, denier
of immortality, 99, 290.

Alexander, of Macedon, pupil of
Aristotle, 34.

Alexander Polyhistor, 2.

Alexander VI., Pope, establishes
censorship of the press, 279 ;
tolerates satirists, 282 ; vices of,
297,309.

Alexander, the false prophet, 89-92.

Alexandrian library, destroyed,
116.

Alexandnanism, or Neo-Platonism,
102.

Alexius Comnenus, a persecutor,
139.

Alfar, Hugo d\ assassin of inquis-
itors, 171.

Alfonso, king of Naples, protec-
tor of Valla, 277.

Alfred, of England, pupil of Eri-
gena, 128.

Al Gazali, founder of Sufism, 156.

Allah, Abul, skeptical poet, 131.

Allegorism, of Origen, 101 ; of the
Catharists, 134 ; of the Walden-
ses, 158 ; of Savonarola, 320 ;
its delusive tendencies, 330.

Amafinius, Epicurean poet, 50.

Amalric, pantheistic Mystic, 157,
174.

Ambrose, opponent of persecution,
118 ; of philosophy, 119, 150.

AmeUus, Neo-Platonist, 103.

American Revolution, condemned
by the New Testament, 79.

Ammianus, tolerant historian, 113.

Ammonius Saccas, founder of Neo-
Platonism, 102.

Amos, against authority of priests,

Anabaptists^ Mystics opposing in-
fant baptism and zealous for po-
litical liberty, 342-346, 364, 366,

3r^/»
76.

Anasfasius, Pope, persecutor, 101 ;
heretic, 217.

Anaxayoras, opinions, 7 ; persecu-
tion, 8, 9.

436

INDEX.

Anaximander, evolutionism of, 4.

Anaximenes, teacher of the order
of nature, 4.

Andrelini, author of a satire
against Pope Julius II., 306.

Anniceris, follower of Aristippus
of Cyrene, 30.

Anselm, as a theologian, 137, 150.

Anti-Christ, pope called so, 232,
248.

Antinomianism, of German Mys-
tics, 221-223; of Lutherans, 373 ;
of Joris, 376.

Antisthenes, the first Cynic, 30, 100.

Antistius, Roman satirist, 74.

Antonio,, deliverer of Tiberius, 77.

Antoninus, Marcus Aurelius ; see
Aurelms.

Antoninus Pius, liberty-loving em-
peror, 88.

Antony, of Florence, exposed
False Decretals, 281,

Antwerp, early heresy at, 140.

Anytus, prosecutor of Socrates, 21.

Apollinaris, defender of Christi-
anity against Porphyry, 103.

Apollpnius, of Perga, a mathema-
tician, 57.

Apostolic Brethren, a sect of Mys-
tics, 177.

Apostolic, Constitutions, forbid re-
belling against the clergy, 83 ;
or reading heathen books, 97.

Apostles' Creed, spurious, 111, 277,
301.

Aquinas, Thomas, on miracles,
180 ; on immortality, 288, 290.

Arc, sec Joan of.

Arcesilaus, a skeptical PTatonist,
38.

Archelaus, holds ru>ht and wrong
merely conventional, 29.

Archimedes, founder of hydrostat-
ics, 57.

Arduiho, calls Divina Commedia
spurious, 214.

Areopagus, banishes Stilpo for im-
piety, 29.

Arete, daughter and follower of
Aristippus of Cyrene, 30.

Aretino, 857.

Ariosto, on monasticism, 283.

Arista ir//i/f!, first to declare the sun
central, 58.

Aristippus. the Cyrenaic, 17, 29,
880.

Aristophanes, assailant of Eurip-

ides. 11 ; describer of Socrates,
18-20.

Aristotle, opinions, 32-34 ; honored
like Jesus, 85 ; not to be studied
by Christians, 97, 175, 180 ;
medieval influence, 153, 156, 175,
182, 189, 287, 347; authority
questioned by Bacon, 182 ; by
Nicholas of Autricuria, 235 ; by
Ramus, Vives, and Cardan, 350 ;
appealed to in attacking Christi-
anity by Pomponatius, 291, and
Rysswick, 319.

Arians, origin, 111 ; intolerance,
112, 115 ; missionaries, 116 ; sup-
pression, 116, 117, 126 ; revival,
364. 365.

Arnold, of Brescia, pupil of Abe-
lard, 141 ; liberator of Rome,
142 ; martyrdom, 143, 145.

Arnold, an earlier martyr, 141.

Arria, Platonist, 99.

Arria, wife of Po3tus, 70.

Arria, wife of Thrasea, 74.

Arrian, recorder of discourses of
Epictetus, 85.

Art, influence of, 292-295.

Artemonites, primitive Unitarians,
97.

Articles, the Four, 254; the Twelve,
343, 344.

Aruknus Rusticm, friend of
Thrasea, 74, 76.

Assassination, of Domitiau, 76 ; of
Conrad and other inquisitors,
171-173, 197, 221 ; of duke of
Milan, 279.

Ascue, Anne, martyr for disbelief
in transubstantiation, 332, 333,
364.

Asoka, first tolerant monarch, 2.

Aspasia, on trial for unbelief, 8.

Astarotte, forerunner of Mephis-
topheles, 282.

Astrolabe, son »of Abelard and
Heloise, 146.

Astrology, opposed by Roman
senate, 57 ; favored by Bacon,
182, and Cecco, 235 ; opposed
by Favoriuus, 87, by Pico, 280,
and by Rabelais, 353.

Athanasian Creed, when forged,
111, 130.

Atfianasius, opinions and persecu-
tions, 111-115.

At/wixm, of Hippo, 4 ; of Diagoras,
11, 12 : of Critias, 21 ; of Theo-

INDEX.

437

dore, 30 ; of Cotta, 38 ; of Pa-
cuvius, 51 ; of Dolet, doubtful,
358.

Aihem, persecutes philosophy, 8 ;
to her own ruin, 9 ; murders
Socrates, 23 ; prohibits teaching
of philosophy, 35 ; allows free-
dom of thought during seven
centuries, 35, 60.

Atomic theory, taught by Leucippus
and Democritus, 12 ; by Epi-
curus, 44, 45 ; by Lucretius, 53.

Atonement, doctrine of the, 137;
disbelief in the, 375,*376.

Atticus, an Epicurean, 50.

Attius, Epicurean poet, 51.

Augsburg, treaty at, 332.

Augury, exposed by an augur, 59.

Augustinian Awrroist, 280.

Augustine, opposes taking interest,
107 ; extols celibacy, 108 ; favors

• persecution, 120-122, 125, 150 ;
criticised by Valla, 277.

Augustus, tries to suppress liberty
of thought, 60-64.

Aurelian, conquers Zenobia, 105.

Aurelius, Marcus, Antoninus, his
regard for liberty while emperor,
88 ; his Meditations, 88, 89 ; his
superstition, 89, 90 ; his persecu-
tion of Christianity, 90.

Aussig, battle of, 256.

Autier, Pierre, Catharist, 172.

Avempace, Moslem Mystic, 156.

Averroes, the Moslem rationalist,
153, 154; opponent of Mysticism,
156 ; forbidden to be read, 175,
180 ; translated, 189 ; placed
highest amongst teachers, except
Aristotle, by Rysswick, 319.

Averroism, materialistic disbelief
in immortality, 180, 235, 28,0,
288, 319.

Aoicebron, Jewish Mystic, 136,
155.

Avicenna, Moslem philosopher,
189.

Axiochus, translated by Dolet, who
is punished capitally for a mis-
take, 358.

Aylmer, Bishop, against absolute
monarchy, 351.

Aylmer, real name of Cade, 304,
305.

Babylonish captivity, of the papacy
at Avignon. 207, 244.

Baccfiic ^worship, denounced by

Heraclitus, 6; forbidden by Ro-
man senate, 57.

Bacon, lioger, imprisoned for love
of science, 181-183; not men-
tioned by Dante, 217.

Badby, Lollard martyr, 250.

Bainham, burned for belief in sup-
• eriority of morality to ceremony,

oo4.

Balboa, discoverer of the Pacific,
296.

Ball, John, preaches insurrection,
246; hung, 247.

Bandello, satirical novelist, 282.

Banking, introduced without ec-
clesiastical sanction, 296.

Baptism, rejected by the Cathar-
ists, 134; by Bunderlin, 376.

Barbadori, appeals from the pope
to Christ, 244.

Basel, Council of, struggles against
pope, 259, 260 ; makes peace with
Hussites, 256, 257.

Basel, Defense of the Council off
311.

Basel, a tolerant city, 370, 371, 372.

Basil, a Bulgarian Catharist, 139.

Basilides, Gnostic, 85.

Bassen, Conradin, Unitarian mar-
tyr, 380.

Bathing, revived by crusades, 294.

Baunet, anti-Romish moralist,
301.

Bebel, anti-clerical satirist, 312,
313.

Becket, why sainted, 138, 273.

Beghards, and Beguines, charita-
ble societies inclined to Mysti-
cism, 221.

Bellius, see Castalio.

Bembo, protector of Pomponatius,
290.

Benedict XL, Pope, 206.

Benedict XII. . tries to reform the
Church, 232.

Benedict XIII. , anti-pope, de-
posed by council of Constance,
258.

Berengar, opponent of transub-
stantiation, 135.

Berlichingen, Gotz von, leader and
betrayer of the rebel peasants,
344, 345.

Bern, more tolerant than Geneva,
371, 372, 376, 379.

Bernard of Clairvaux, persecutor
of Catharists, 135; of Arnold

INDEX.

141; of Abelard, 148, 153 ; a
Mystic, 155.

Bernard Sylvester, Mystic, 155.

Bessarion, a reviver of Platonism,
276.

Bible, as a platform, 241, 330; its
authority rejected, 299, 300, 319,
375, 379; versions, 116, 133, 157,
242, 245, 303, 329.

Biblical criticism, by Origen, 101,
396; by Porphyry, 104; by Chivi,
134; by Abelard, 149, "150; by
Heloise, 151, 152; by Valla, 277;
by Erasmus, 318. 338; by Serve-
tus, 365, 366, 396.

Bilgard, early heretic, 131.

Black Cross Knights, oppose pope,
231.

Black Death, 224, 245.

Blanche, Queen of France, 168,
193, 194.

Blandina,, Christian martyr, 90.

Blandrata, Unitarian, 372.

BlaspJiemy, a capital crime at Ge-
neva, 334.

Boccaccio, 235, 281, 302.

Bocher, Joan, or Joan of Kent, mar-
tyr. 342, 364.

Bogomiles, a party among the Cath-
arists, 139.

Boheim, Hans, a rebellious Mvstic,
304.

Bohemia, revolts from Rome, 251,
257.

Bohlke, peasant leader of rebel-
lion, 188.

Boiardo, anti-clerical poet, 283.

Bolaec, opponent of Calvinism, 371.

Bonaventura, Mystic and persecu-
tor, 181.

Boniface VIII., Pope, persecutor
of Mysticism, 220; claimant of
absolute authority, 195, 196, 200,
204 ; prisoner in the Vatican,
206; prosecuted for vice and un-
belief, 207; put in hell by Dante,
215,216.

Bonivard, Genevan patriot, 334.

Book-men, as servants of liberty
and progress, 393, 395.

Books, idolatry of, opposed by Pa-
racelsus, 348; by Galen, 349; by
Vives and Cardan, 350; by Rabe-
lais, 353, 354.

Borgias, 279-282, 297.

Boiirgogne, Jacques de, first to claim
free speech for Christians, 371.

Brandt, Sebastian, satirist, 303.
Brown. John, compared to Dolcino.

177, 212.

Browning, Robert, 103, 348.
Bruni, anti-clerical scholar, 276.
Bruno, Giordano, 259.
Brutus, a skeptic, 38 ; his memory,

76, 86, 88.

Bucer, advocates massacring her-
etics, 346.

Buclianan, George, satirist and dra-
matist, 361, 362.
Buddha, and^Buddhism, 2, 3.
Bull, pope'sfburned at Paris, 203;

Prague, 252; Wittenberg, 328.
BilnderUn, Mystic of advanced

views, 375, 376.
Bundschuh, peasant's shoe and

standard of revolt, 343.
Burgo, Lucas de, early algebraist,

286.

Cabalistic philosophy, 313.
Cabots, 296. 298.
Cade, Jack, misrepresented in

Henry VI., 304, 305.
Cmsar, Julius, an Epicurean, 49,

50 ; reformer of the calendar,

58 ; tolerant, 50.
Caligula, 64, 70.
Calixtines, the moderate Hussites,

253-257.
Calvin, Institutes, 334; intolerance,

334, 335, 365-372, 376-379 ;

share in murder of Servetus,

365-370.
Calvinism, defined. 121, 128, 330 ;

opposed by Hoffmann, 342 ; by

Servetus, 367 ; by Bolsec, 371 ;

by Franck, 374.
Calycles, coins made from chalices,

253.
Cambridge, colleges founded at,

298. '
Campanus, persecuted Unitarian,

363, 364.

Canterbury Tales, 249, 250.
Capnio, name assumed by Reuch-

lin, 311.

Cappel, battle of, 331.
Caputiati, medieval levelers, 144.
Ca/rbeas, heretic general, 127.
Carcassonne, taken by crusaders.

165 ; revolts against inquisition,

220.
Cardan, tries to introduce scientific

methods, 350, 351.
Carlstadt, liberal Protestant, 375.

INDEX.

439

Carneades, skeptical Platonist, 38.

Carniola, Archbishop of, and his
attempts at reform, 297.

Carpocmtes, the Gnostic, 85.

Casale, Franciscan Mystic, 218,
220.

Caspi, Jewish rationalist, 235.

Cassius, Gains, conspirator against
Julius Caesar, 50, 73.

Cassius, Avidius, conspirator
against Marcus Aurelius, 88.

Cassius Severus, persecuted his-
torian, 63.

Castalio, advocate of tolerance,
370, 371.

Castruccio, an imperialist, 231.

Cat/iarists. origin, 133, 134 ; views,
132-135, 138, 139 ; in Southern
France, 131, 132, 135, 138-140,
163-172 ; in England, 138 ; in
Germany, 133, 138, 172 ; in
Italy, 133, 135, 137, 172, 173,
189 ; their high morality, 135,
202 ; ruinous error, 174.

Catherine, of Siena, 262.

Catius, Epicurean poet, 50.

Cato, the Censor, opponent of
skepticism, 38.

Cato.'ot Utica, 39, 74, 76, 86,88,
217.

Catullus, Epicurean poet, 50.

Cauchon, persecutor of Joan of
Arc, 263-267.

Caxton, the printer, 298.

Cecco, of Ascoli, martyr for astrol-
ogy, 235.

Celestine II. , Pope, friend to Ar-
nold of Brescia, 141, 142, 145.

Celestine V., Pope, 178, 196, 216,
219.

Celibacy, favored by Paul and the
Church Fathers, 108; also by the
Manichaeans, 118 ; established in
Church of Rome, 118 ; the re-
sult, 137, 225, 244, 249, 254, 258,
273, 278, 281, 282, 297, 305, 313,
332, 336, 337. See also Mar-
riage.

Cellarius, opposes persecution, 372.

Celso, Minos, opposes persecution,
372.

Celsus, early writer against Christi-
anity, 85, 90.

Censorship, of the press, established
by Alexander VI., 279.

Cerberus, Trinity compared to, 366.

Cerinthus, Gnostic, 85.

Cesena, defended by Marzia Orde-
laffl against crusaders, 236, 237.

Chaldcean astrologers, expelled
from Italy, 57.

Champeaux, William of, a Realist
conquered by Abelard, 144, 146.

Charlemagne, restoring order, 130.

Charles IV., becomes emperor,
233 ; imprisons Rienzi, 228.

Charles V., keeps his mother im-
prisoned, 341.

Charles, of Anjou, sent by pope to
conquer Naples and Sicily, 192.

Charles, the Bald, protector of
Erigena, 128.

Charter, the Bold, conquered by
the Swiss, 304.

Charmides, aristocrat and friend of
Socrates, 17, 21.

Chaucer, 184, 249, 250, 388.

Chim, Jewist rationalist, 131.

Christine de Pisan, earliest profes-
sional authoress, 301.

Christopher I. of Denmark, im-
prisons an archbishop, 194.

Chrysolaras, revives study of Greek
in Italy, 276.

Cicero, skeptical Platonist, 38, 59 ;
not to be studied by Christians,
119 ; influence m favor of liberty,
86, 279.

Cinthio, novelist used by Shake-
speare, 282.

Circulation of the Blood, discovered
by Servetus, 365, 367.

Claudius, independent bishop,
129.

Claudius, the emperor, 64, 70.

Cleanthes, Stoic poet, 40 ; opponent
of science, 58.

Clement, independent bishop, 128.

Clement, of Alexandria, a liberal
Christian, 101, 107, 124; loses
his place among the saints, 390 ;
mentions the Buddha, 2.

Clement IV., Pope, patron of
Bacon, 181, 182, and Charles of
Anjou, 192.

Clement V. , Pope, in French serv-
ice, 206, 207 ; destroys the
Templars, 209, 210 ; put by
Dante in hell, 216.

Clement VL, Pope, lover of
Joanna of Naples, 205, 207 ;
enemy to Rienzi, 227, 228.

Cleomenes, patriotic king, 39.

Cleopatra, influence in politics, 61.

440

INDEX.

Clerical authority, how far favored
by Jesus, 69 ; and by the New
Testament, 81-83, 270 ; fully
recognized in the second cen-
tury, 83. See also Papacy.

Clopinel, nickname of Jean de
Meung, 184.

Cobham, Lollard martyr, 250.

Colet, liberal Catholic, 315.

Colonna, Vitloria, calls Italian art
irreligious, 294.

Colonna, Sciarra, enemy to Boni-
face VIII., 205-207, 231.

Columbus, sources of information,
182, 286 ; importance of his dis-
covery, 296.

Coluccio, champion of study of
classic poets, 276.

Come-outers, led by Dolcino, 212.

Communism, charged against Dol-
cino and the Strasburg Mystics,
221 ; preached by John Ball,
246 ; also by Hans Boheim, 304 ;
taught in the Utopia, 316, and
by Anabaptists, 346.

Commerce, its effects on Christi-
anity, 296, 298.

Conceptual ism, 145, 163.

Confession, to be made at least once
a year, 167 ; its result, 241, 282 ;
opposed by Wycliffe, 248 ; and
by Erasmus, 337.

Congregationalism, how far fav-
ored by Jesus and the Apostles,
69, 333 ; established among the
Paulicians, 126 ; and Taborites,
254 ; favored by Luther, 328 ;
demanded by the insurgent peas-
ants, 343.

Conrad, last Hohenstauffen em-
peror, 192.

Conrad, inquisitor, 172.

Conradin, son of the emperor,
Conrad, 192.

Conservatism, causes of. 397-401.

Constance, Council of, member-
ship, 258 ; burns Huss, 253 ;
other proceedings, 258, 259.

Constantine, the emperor, estab-
lishes Christianity, 110-112, 115;
his alleged grant to the pope,
130, 215, 277, 281, 301, 356.

Constantine, thePaulician, 126.

Constantinople, captured with
doubtful effect on western
scholarship, 276.

Constantius, Arian persecutor, 112.

Contarini, liberal Catholic, 334.

Copernicus, 1, 350, 381.

Cordus, Cremutius, martyr for free
speech, 70, 86.

Cornutus, Stoic, 75.

Cornwall, Earl of, 192, 195.

Councils, their authority denied by
Frederic II., 191 ; Ockham,
234 ; Huss, 252 ; Wesel, 324.
See for single councils, Basel,
Constance, Earthquake, Ferrara,
Lateran, Lyons, Nicaea, Pisa,
Sens, Soissons, Vienne.

Gotta, an atheist, 38.

Courtrai, victory of Flemish arti-
sans over king of France, 304.

Cranmer, Archbishop, 333.

Grates, the Cynic, 31, 32.

Crazy Socrates, nickname of Dio-
genes, 31.

Creation denied, 180, 319.

Crecy, a peasant victory, 304.

Cremutius Cordus, sec Cordus.

Critias, atheist and tyrant, 21.

Crito, friend to Socrates, 16, 17, %
23, 24.

Ci-cesus, enslaver of Ionia, 4.

Grotus Rubumus, author of the
Letters of Obscure Men, 310, 311.

Crusades, against the tolerant
Languedocians, 139, 164-169 ;
against the Stediogers, 188 ;
against the Bohemians, 254-256 ;
against Marzia Ordelaffi, 2'J7 ;
against the Asiatics, 137, 273,
294 ; these last unnecessary, 187 ;
their failure taken as a judg-
ment from God, 159.

Cusa, Cardinal de. teaches that the
earth moves, 259, 286.

Cybele, worship of, forbidden, 64.

E'cs, 30-32, 35, 38, 47, 75.
ian, 83, 107-109.
!, murderer of Hypatia, 114.

Gyrenaics, 29, 30, 35.

Damasus, Pope, a pattern of ortho-
doxy, 116, 117.

Damis, an atheist in Lucian, 93,
94.

Damon, music teacher, exiled, 8.

Danace, Epicurean. 45.

Dance of Death, 260.

Daniel, Book of, a forgery, 104.

Dante, an imperialist, 213, 214,
216, 217 ; antagonist of the
papacy, 214-217 ; admirer of the.
heretical Mystics, 218, 219.

INDEX.

441

Dark Ages, 120, 272.

David of Dinanto, Mystic, 175.

Deborah, ruler of Israel, 78.

Decameron, by Boccaccio, 235,
281, 302.

Decius, persecutor of Christianity,
. 101, 109.

Decretals, ridiculed by Rabelais,
354, 355. See also False Decre-
tals.

Defensor Pads, its anti- papal
views, 230.

Delicieux, Bernard, Mystic, and
enemy of the inquisition, 220,
221.

Demetrius, the Cynic, 75.

Democritus, his opinions, 12-14 ;
influence over Epicurus, 42-
45.

Demonax, rationalistic philoso-
pher, 95.

Demoniacal possession, 397 ; ques-
tioned by Pomponatius, 290.

Denck, Unitarian and Universal-
ist, 376.

Desperriers, satirist, 357, 358.

Despotism, necessarily unstable,
106, 108, 109, 124 ; and immor-
al, 399.

Diagoras, the atheist, 11, 12.

Diccearchus, peripatetic material-
ist, 35.

Diet, of Germany, opposed to pope,
233.

Dignity of Labor, taught by Dion
Chrysostom, 76 ; by Clement of
Alexandria, 101 ; in the Romance
of the Nose, 184 ; in Piers' Plow-
man, 242, 295.

Diocletian, persecutor of Christian-
ity, 110.

Diogenes Laertius, 95, 98.

Diogenes, of Apollonia, 12.

Diogenes, the Cynic, 31.

Dion Chrysostom, 76, 85, 96.

Dion, of Syracuse, 9, 28.

Dionysius, a bishop who claimed
the right to read heretic books,
101, 102.

Dionysius, the Epicurean, 92,93.

Dionysius, the tyrant, 28, 30.

Diopeithes, intolerant priest, 8.

Divorce, in imperial Rome, 78.

Docetism, 84.

Dolcino, levies war against the
Church, 177,211-213,221.

Dolet, skeptic and martyr, 358.

Domenico, Fra, mystic and martyr,
322.

Dominic, opponent of Catharism,
164, 167.

Dominicans, as inquisitors, 169.
See also Friars, Inquisition, and
* Monasticism.

Domitian, 75, 76, 96.

Domitius Afer's jest, 64.

Donatists, fanatical levelers, 110,
122.

Door Opener, nickname of Crates,
31.

Droso, inquisitor, 172.

Dubois, Pierre, anti-clerical states-
man, 205.

Dumvulin, liberal Catholic, 340.

Durer, Albert, 302.

Dyer, John the, a rebel peasant,
247.

Earth, motion of, taught by Pytha-
goras and Aristarchus, 58 ; by
Jean de Meung, 185 ; by Cardi-
nal de Cusa, 259 ; by Coperni-
cus, 350, 381.

Earthquake Council, condemns
Lollards, 247.

Eccelin, anti-papal prince, 172,
183.

Ecdesiastes, Epicurean, 44.

Eckhart, or Echard, mystic, 222^
224.

Eclipses, terrify Athenians and
Macedonians ruinously, 9, 59.

Education, neglect of, 272 ; reform
proposed by Rabelais, 353, 354.

Edward I,, first foe, then friend to*
English liberty, 195.

Edward III., opposes pope, 233,
238.

Edward VL, 333.

Eleans, or Eleatics, Italian skep-
tics, 4-6.

Electoral princes, protest against
papal tyranny, 232, 233.

Eleusinian mysteries, treated irrev-
erently by Alcibiades, 9 ; by
Diagoras, 12 ; by Socrates, 21 ;.
by Demouax, 95.

Eliacs, Greek skeptics, 29.

Etias, liberal Franciscan, 190.

Elizabeth, of England, 333.

Elizabeth, of Hungary, 172.

Emerson, forerunners of, 129, 160,
223, 225.

Empedocles, patriot and rational-
ist, 6, 7, 53.

442

INDEX,

England, resists an interdict, 185 ;
establishes Magna Charta, 186,
194, 195 , makes laws against
the pope, 238, 249 ; persecutes
the Catharists, 138, and the Lol-
lards, 250 ; comes late into the
Renaissance, 298, 315 ; welcomes
the Reformation, 332, 333 ; noted
for scholarly women, 391.

English literature, begins, 238.

Ennius, Epicurean poet, 50, 51.

Eon, the Star,- mystical heretic,
141, 155.

Epicharmus, one of the first to
ridicule the gods, 6, 51.

Epictetus, 39, 64, 75, 77, 85.

Epicurus, authorities about, 44, 86,
98 ; life and character, 42, 43,
46, 49 ; teachings, 44-49 ; disci-
ples, 44, 49-51, 62, 63, 90, 92-
95, 99, 217.

Episcopalianism, 69, 252, 333.

Equality, social, advocated by Cyn-
ics. 30 ; by Gracchus, 39 ; by
King Cleomenes, 39 ; by Seneca,
71, 72 ; by Dion Chrysostom, 76;
by the New Testament, 82,
343, 392 ; by Juvenal, 87 ; by the
Donatists, 110 ; by the Capu-
tiati, 144 ; by Freidauk, 179 ;
by Reinmar, 180 ; by Ruteboeuf,
183 ; by Jean de Meune, 184 ;
by the Stedingers, 188 ; by Dol-
ciuo, 212, 221 ; by Rienzi, 226 ;
by John Ball, 246 ; by the Ta-
borites, 254 ; by Poggio, 277 ;
by Hans Boheirn, 304 ; by Jack
Cade, but very moderately, 304 ;
by More, 316 ; by Cornelius
Agrippa, 339 ; by the German
peasants, 343, 345. 392.

Erasmus, as a reformer, 316-319,
336-339, 363.

Eretrians, skeptical philosophers,
29.

Erigena, Johannes Scotus, mystic
and rationalist, 128, 129 ; books
burned, 135.

Esclarmonde, Catharist lady, 165-
167, 171.

Eternal Gospel, 155, 176, 177.

Enhulides, skeptical philosopher,
29.

R'irlid, the geometrician, 57 ; not
to be studied by Christians, 97.

Euclid, the skeptic, 29.

Eudo, or Eon, 141.

Eudoxus, Platonist astronomer, 26.

Eugenius IV., Pope, at war with
Council of Basel, 259, 260.

Eunomiam, Arian rationalists,
117.

Euripides, against the gods, 11.

Eusebius, 103, 110.

Evangelical BrotJierhood, of rebel
peasants, 343.

Evemerus, against the gods, 30,
51.

Evolutionism, of early philosophers,
4, 6 ; of Lucretius, 55 ; of Car-
dan 351.

Faith, due to compulsion, 389.

Faith, not to be kept with here-
tics, 165, 252.

Falais, Lord of, advocates free-
dom of speech, 371.

False DecretaU, when forged, 130 ;
exposed, 142, 277, 281, 301.

False Donation, see Coustantine.

Fannia, Stoic heroine, 74, 76, 77.

Farel, pastor at Geneva, 366, 369.

Farinata, imperialist and skeptic,
183, 217.

Fastolf, 263.

Fate, dark views of, 41, 42.

Fathers, of the Church, their nar-
rowness, 83, 84, 107, 108 ; see
also Ambrose, Augustine, Cle-
ment, Cyprian, Cyril, Gregory,
Jerome, and Tertullian.

Faust, the printer, 303.

Favorinus, assailant of astrology,
87.

Felix, anti pope, 260.

Ferrara, Council of, 259, 276.

Ferrara, Duchess of, 359.

Ficino, reviver of Platonism, 279,
280.

Fidele, Cassandra, Averroist lec-
turer, 280.

Figueira, anti-papal troubadour,
179.

Fitzralph, Archbishop, opposed to
the begging friars, 238.

Flagellants, 261.

Fiorence-, full of Catharists, 172 ;
center of Renaissance, 235 ;
makes war on pope, 243, 244 ;
rejects hereditary distinctions,
277 ; seat of a Council, 259,
276 ; republic, 320, 321.

Flotte, Pierre, anti-papal lawyer,
203.

Folengo, skeptical poet, 357.

INDEX.

443

Foncelet, opposes persecution, 372.

Four Articles, of the Hussites, 254,
256.

France, chief seat of Catharism,
132, 138 ; cradle of Mysticism,
129, 155 ; center of medieval
learning, 144 ; struggles for po-
litical liberty, 143 ; against the
inquisition, 169, 170, 202 ;
against the pope, 200-211, 257,
305.

Francis I., patron of Rabelais,
354, 355.

Franciscans, inclined to Mysticism,

177, 178, 218-221 ; imprison
Bacon, 181, 182, and Rabelais,
352. See Friars and Monas-
ticism.

Franck Sebastian, tolerant Mystic,

opposed to Calvinism, 373-375.
Fratricelli, Franciscan Mystics,

178, 218-221.

Frederic!., Barbarossa, 142, 143.

Frederic II. , his strife with the
popes, 187, 188, 190-192 ; his
government, 188-190 ; his skep-
ticism, 188-190.

Frederic, of Austria, 230, 231.

Free Spirit, Brothers and Sisters of
the, heretical Mystics, 221, 222,
261.

Free-will, 277, 330, 342, 367, 371,
374.

Free-Willers, 364.

Freidank, liberal poet, 179.

French Revolution, aided by Plu-
tarch, 86.

Freron, immoral clergyman at
Geneva, 371.

Frezzi, anti-clerical poet, 357.

Friars, attacked by William of St.
Amour, 181 ; by Ruteboeuf and
Jean de Meung, 183, 184 ; by
Archbishop Fitzralph, 238 ; by
Wycliffe, 248 ; by Bebel,|313 ;
by Erasmus, 336 ; by Cornelius
Agrippa, 339 ; by Rabelais,
355 ; by Lyndsay and Buchanan,
361. See Dominicans, Francis-
cans, and Monasticism.

Fulk, wicked bishop, 168, 217.

Future, of Liberty of Thought, 402.

<Galen, 64, 85 ; an agnostic, 91 ;
not to be studied by Christians,
97 ; his authority renounced by
Paracelsus, 348, 349 and Vesa-
lius, 349.

Galeottus, believer in morality, 278.

Gallicus, lawyer murdered for
defending his client, 64.

Gama, Vasco di, discoverer, 296.

Geiler, popular preacher, 303.

Gemistus Pletho, a reviver of
Platonism, 276.

Geneva, casts off her bishop, 333 ;
but comes under Calvin, 334 ;
yet shows occasional independ-
ence, 371, 372.

Gentilis, Unitarian martyr, 372.

George, archbishop of Alexandria,
and champion of England, 114.

Gerard, Catharist, 133.

Gerard, editor of the Eternal Gospel,
176.

Germany, Catharists in, 133, 138,
172 ; mystics, 175, 176, 221-225,
261, 262, 323-325, 373-376 ;
rationalistic poets, 179, 180, 310,
311 ; free cities, 193 ; revolts
against the pope under Louis of
Bavaria, 230-233, and under
Luther, 328, 332.

Gerson, leader at Constance, 258,
259.

Gersonides, Jewish rationalist, 235.

Geyer, Fiorian, leader in the
Peasants' war, 344, 345.

Ghibellines, or imperialists, 143, 183,
213, 214.

Gibbon, unjust to Zenobia, 105.

Gilbert, of Poitiers, mystic, 155.

Gnostics, 84, 85, 124, 127.

Goch, German mystic, 323.

Gods of Greece and Rome, as-
sailed by early philosophers and
poets, 4-7, 11 ; by Epicurus, 42 ;
deserving attack, 41.

Gotz, von Berlichingen, leader and
traitor in the Peasants' war, 344,
345.

Golden Age, according to the Ro-
mance of the Rose, 185.

Golden EuU, against papacy, 233.

Gorgias, Sophist, 15.

Gottsclialk, "forerunner of Calvin,
128.

Gracchus, 39. 86.

Gregory, of Nazianzus, 112.

Gregory IX., Pope, 180, 187,190,
191.

Gregory XL, 262.

Granson, victory of Swiss at, 304.

Gratian, destroyer of Paganism,
116.

444

INDEX.

Greek, its study revived, 276 ; pun-
ished in Rabelais, 352.

Gribaldi, follower of Servetus, 369,
372.

Gfi'ingoire, anti-papal dramatist,
305, 306, 359.

Grostete, fiobert, liberal bishop,
181, 194.

Gruet, beheaded for opposing per-
secution at Geneva, 377-379.

Gryphius, writer against the in-
quisition, 357.

Guarino, teacher of Greek in Italy,
276.

Guelfs, or papists, 143, 213.

Guicciardini, skeptical historian,
357.

Gunpowder, made effective by
Zizka, 254, 269.

Gutenberg, inventor of printing,
302, 303.

Guy, of Auvergne, Templar and
martyr, 211.

Guyot, of Provence, satirist, 178.

Gymnastics, forbidden in Macca-
bees, 293.

Hadrian, the emperor, 76, 86-88.

Hanseatic League, 193.

Hanska, martyr for opposing tran-
substantiation, 255.

Happiness, not diminished by
Skepticism, 400, 401.

Hapsburgs, 193.

Hebrew prophets, 1, 3, 78.

Hebrews, see Judaism.

Hegel, anticipated by Heraclitus, 6.

Hegesias, the Orator of Death, 39.

Heimburg, Gregory, 303.

Helfenstein, Count of, slain by the
rebel peasants, 344.

Heloise, 144, 146, 151-153.

Helma, mother of Seneca, 72, 77.

Helmdius, Stoic martyr, 75, 76, 88,
96.

Hemmerlein, Felix, persecuted
scholar, 303.

Himmingstadt, a peasant victory,
304.

Henricians, followers of Henry of
Cluny. 141.

Henry of Cluny, also called Henry
the, Deacon and Henry of Lau-
sanne, early reformer, 141.

Henry II., of England, as a perse-
cutor, 138.

Henry III., at war with Parliament,
194, 195.

Henry IV., and Henry V. as per-
secutors, 250.

Henry VIII. , prophesied, 242;
founds a new church, 332, 333 ;
persecutes, 332.

Henry IV., emperor, 135.

Heraclitus, foreruniK r of Stoicism
and Hegelian ism, 5-7.

Hereford, Lollard, 248.

Heresy, condemned in New Testa-
ment, 81, and by the Church
Fathers, 97, 101, 121 : perse-
cuted, 112, 117, and often after-
wards ; consists mainly in obsti-
nacy, 252.

Heretics Fremli, 176.

Hermits, 108,

Hesus, worship of, forbidden, 64.

Hetzer, Unitarian poet and martyr.
364.

Hildebrand, 135.

Hildeyard, tolerant abbess, 155.

Hincmar, intolerant archbishop,
128.

Ilipparchia, Cynic, 32.

Ilipparchus, the astronomer, 58.

Hippias, Sophist, 15.

Hippier, Wendel, leader in the
Peasants' war, 345.

Hippo, atheist, 4.

Hippocrates, founder of medicine,
13, 290, 348.

Hoffmann, Melchior, leading Ana-
baptist, 342.

HohenloJie, Counts of, fraternize
with the peasants, 344.

Ilohcnstauffen, fall of the, 192.

Homburg, Synod of , intolerant, 346.

Homer, honored like Jesus, 85.

IIomoouMnnixiii, orthodox, 111.

Hooper, Protestant martyr, 333.

Horace, Epicurean and time-server,,
62.

Ilosea, against priests, 1.

llonpitdilers, their tolerance, 224,
278.

Humanists, 278-279.

y, the Master of, arebel, 193.
. 251-353, 259.

, 253-257, 260, 269.

llutten, the knight-errant of the
Reformation, 306, 310, 362, 3G3.

Hypatia, 114, 120, 124.

Ibti Batija, or Avempace, Moslem
mystic, 156.

Jbn. Gcbirol, Jewish mystic, also
known as Avicebron, 135, loO.

INDEX.

445

.Ibii Roshd, see Averroes.

Ibn Tophail, or Abubacer, Moslem
mystic, 156.

Icon oclo ts?n, 127.

Iglau, Peace of, 257.

Ignatius, early Father, 83, 87.

Imitation of Ckritt, 258.. 261.

Immorality, in Italy, how caused,
287, 399, 400.

Immortality, questioned by Demo-
critus, 12 ; by Aristotle, 34, 99,
288 ; by Decaearchus, 35 ; by
Cicero, 38 ; by Epicurus, 45 ;
by Caesar, 50 ; by Lucretius, 54 ;
by Epictetus, 76 ; by Lucian, 94 ;
by Alexander of Aphrodisias,
99, 290 ; by the Averroists, 180,
235, 280, 288, 319 ; by Pompona-
tius, 287-290 ; by Rysswick,
319 ;by Anaptists, 379 ; byLudo-
vici, 380.

Imperialism, necessarily unstable,
106, 109 ; and immoral, 399.

Index of Prohibited Books, 336.

Indulgences, condemned by Huss,
251 ; by Wesel, 323 ; by Wessel,
324 ; by Luther, 328 ; by Eras-
mus, 336, 337.

Innocent 111. , Pope, persecutor of
Catharism, 135, 140, 163-165,
167 ; called a new Judas, 179 ;
conquers King John, 185, 186 ;
tries to nullify Magna Charta,
186 ; opposes Hanseatic League,
193.

Innocent IV. , tries to depose Fred-
eric II., 191 ; and to sell Naples
and Sicily, 192.

Innocent VI., sends Rienzi back to
Rome, 228.

Innocent VIII. , condemns Pico as
a heretic, 279 ; is very vicious,
297.

Ionic philosophers, 3-10, 12.

Inquisition, originated, 140 ; fully
established in Southern France,
169-177, where it is checked,
202, 220 ; in Italy and Germany,
172, 173, 214, 277, 336 ; in Spain,
281.

Intelligence, nickname of Anaxa-
goras, 7.

Interdict, resisted by England, 185 ;
by Germany, 224, 231, 233 ; by
the Stedingers, 188 ; by Christo-
pher I., of Denmark, 194 ; by
the Ordelaffi, 236 ; by Huss,

251 ; laid on Jerusalem, 187, and
Rome, 142.

Interest, not to be taken by Chris-
tians, 107, 295, 296, 330 ; per-
mitted by Frederic II., 189.

Isabella, of Castile, 281.

Isaiah, against priests, 1.

Isis worship, immoral, 57 ; forbid-
den at Rome, 64.

Islam, see Moslemism.

Isotta, argues that Adam is more
to blame than Eve, 280.

Italy, 4, 133, 135, 137, 143, 162,
172, 173, 183, 189, 212, 275, 298,
336. See also Florence, Milan,
Rome, Naples, Papacy, Venice.

Jacob, or Jacobell, of Mies, asserts
right of all Christians to sacra-
mental cup, 253.

Jacquerie, or peasant rebellion,
237.

Jager, or Crotus Rubianus, author
of Letters of Obscure Men, 311.

Jamblichus, Neo-Platonist, 102.

Jeu du Prince des Sots, anti-papal
comedy, 305.

Jehovah, forbidden to be worshiped,
64 ; considered an evil deity,
84; 126, 132-139.

Jeremiah, opposes priests, 1.

Jerome, intolerant, 101, 104, 107 ;
zealous for monasticism, 108,
120 ; scourged by angels for
reading Cicero, 119.

Jerome of Prague, 251-253.

Jesus, 2, 65-70, 79-81, 84, 101, 104,
107, 122, 123, 151, 218, 295, 312,
318, 319, 393.

Jesuits, 336.

Jews, see Judaism.

Joachim, of Floris, Mystic, 155,
176, 218.

Joan, of Arc, 262-268, 314.

Joan, of Aubenton, Mystic, 261.

Joan, of Kent, martyr, 342, 364,
400.

Joanna, of Naples, 127.

Jodelle, writer of anti- clerical
comedv, 359.

John, of England, 185-187,

John, of Parma, Mystic, 176.

JoJin, of Ravenna, scholar, 275.

John, of Strasburg, Waldensian
martyr, 175, 176.

John, the Apostle, 84, 85, 89.

John, the Dyer, King of Norwich,
247.

446

INDEX.

John XXII. , made pope, 230 ;
persecutes Fratricelli, 218, 221 ;
tries to dethrone the emperor,
230, 231 ; is burned in effigy,
232 ; guilty of heresy and rapa-
city, 232.

John XXIII. , deposed, 258.

Joris, David, Anabaptist come-
outer, 376.

Jorinian, opponent of monasti-
cism, 120.

Juana, Queen, imprisoned for tol-
erance, 281, 341.

Jubilee, Papal, 196, 228, 323.

Judaism, its merits, 1, 2. 78, 83,
131, 153, 154, 163, 235, 272 ; de-
fects, 66, 87, 107, 114, 122, 293,
313 ; persecuted, 61, 64, 104,
127, 130, 137, 150, 281, 297, 331 ;
tolerated, 36, 105, 189.

Judas Iscariot, Gospel according

• to, 84.

Judges, Book of, favors rebellion,79.

Julian, liberal bishop, 121.

Julian, the emperor, 113-115, 124.

Julius II., Pope, his tolerance,
282 ; his vices, 297, 305-310,
317, 318 ; in danger of deposi-
tion, 305, 309.

Justification by Faith, 81, 323-329,
338, 373.

Justin Martyr, 84, 90, 368.

Justinian, as a persecutor, 101 ;
his Pandects, 142.

Juvenal, 77, 85-87, 96.

Kanus, Stoic Martyr, 70.

Kaptta, Hindoo skeptic, 3.

Kempis, Thomas a, 262, 323.

Ketzer, derived from Catharist,
133.

King, Eobert, opponent of persecu-
tion, 364.

Knox, as a champion of political
liberty, 351.

Koster, supposed inventor of print-
ing, 302.

Kraut, communistic tailor, 346.

Labienus, patriotic historian, 63.

La Boetie, patriotic essayist, 351.

Labor, see Dignity of Labor.

Lancaster, defends Wycliffe, 244,
249.

Land Tenure of, 361.

Landgrave of Ilesse, champion of
the Reformation, 330-332, 345.

Lanfflanfi poems, 242, 249, 295,
301.

Langton, patriotic archbishop,

186.
Las Casas, champion of the natives

of the West Indies, 346, 347.
Last Age of the Church not written

by Wycliffe, 237.
Lateran Council, Fourth, 167 ;

Fifth, 280.

Latimer, Protestant martyr, 333.
Lawyer, murdered for defending

his client, 64.

Lecky, testimony to Epicurus, 43.
Leibnitz, aided by Valla, 277.
Leicester, patriotic nobleman, 195.
Leipsic University founded, 251.
Leo, the iconoclast, 127.
LeoX., Pope, 282, 297.
Leon, Athenian patriot, 17.
Leonardo da Vinci, 283-286, 293,

294.
Leontium, Epicurean authoress,

43.
Leucippus, founder of atomism,

12.
Leutard, a mysterious heretic, 131r

132.

LHopital, tolerant legislator, 340.
Libertines, Mystics or rationalists,

377.

Liege, wicked bishop of, 244.
Lipan, battle of, 257.
Lisoi, Catharist martyr, 132.
Literature, checked by Augustus

and his successors, 64 ; revives

under constitutional rulers, 85.
Livia, active in politics, 77.
Livy, 64, 287.
Lollards in Germany, 221 ; in East

of England, 248 ; petition, 249 ;

share in rebellions, 245-248,

251 ; persecuted, 250, 269 ;

written against by Pecock, 299-

301 ; welcome the Reformation,

332.
London, chooses her own mayor

and helps win Magna Charta,

186.

Longfellow, quoted, 214, 215.
Longinus, a lover of liberty, 104,

105.
Loquis, martyred by the Hussites,

255.
Lot-mine, Duke of, traitor to the

peasants, 344, 345.
Louis, of Bavaria, chosen emperor,

230 ; protests against opposition

of Pope John XXII., 230;

INDEX.

447

burns him in effigy and appoints
a rival pope, 232 ; summoned to
Rome by Rienzi, 227; dies under
the ban, 233.

Louis IX., opposes the pope, 192,
194.

Louis XL , 302.

Louis XII. , opposes the pope,
305.

Lowell, J. R., indebted to Prodicus
for his Parting of the Ways,
15.

Lucan, patriotic poet, 73, 74,

Lucian, 64, 85, 90-96, 124, 276,
292.

Lucilius, Seneca's friend, 62.

Lucilius, the satirist, 51.

Lucretius, 42, 44, 50-57, 59, 275-
277, 280, 292.

Ludomci, poet who disbelieves in
immortality, 380.

Lully, Eaymond, his method and
martyrdom, 229.

Lutatius, historian, 38.

Luther, his Mysticism, 261, 324,
325 ; reforms, 328 ; conserva-
tism, 329-331 ; controversy with
Erasmus,* 330, 338 ; conduct
towards the rebel peasants, 343,
344 ; position about persecution,
331,364, 375.

Lyceum, Aristotle's, 35.

Lyncurt, defender of Servetus,
372.

Lyndsay, liberal Scottish poet,
346, 360, 361.

Lyons, Poor Men of, name given to
the Waldenses, 157.

Maccabees in favor of rebellion, 79;
against gymnastics, 293.

Mackiavelh, 279, 286, 287, 356.

Maecenas, patron of Horace and an
Epicurean, 62.

Magellan, the discoverer, 296*.

Magna Charta, 186, 194-195.

Maillard, popular preacher, 302.

Maimonides, Hebrew philosopher,
154, 156.

Mainz, seat of invention of print-
ing, 303.

Majella, Monte, retreat of mystics,
228.

Man, origin of, 4, 55.

Manes, and Manicha3aus, 117, 118,
121, 125, 133.

Manfred, anti-papal prince, 192.

I Manilius, tries to answer Lucretius,
56.

Mantz, Anabaptist martyr, 363.

Mantovano, anti-papal satirist, 282.

Manzolli, anti-clerical poet, 357.

Map, Walter, anti-clerical poet, 154.

Marcellina, Gnostic, 85.

Marcellus, augur, who exposes
augury, 59.

Marcion, Gnostic, 85, 127.

Marcus Aurelius, see Aurelius.

Margaret of the Pocket-Mouth, aa
heiress, 233.

Margaret of Trent, martial mys-
tic, 212-213.

Margaret, queen of Denmark,
268, 280.

Margaret, queen of Navarre, her
writings and tolerance, 340, 357,
359, 377.

Marguerite, d'Argoul&ne, see Mar-
garet, queen of Navarre.

Margutte, caricature of unbe-
lieving scholar, 282.

Marietta, faithful servant, 203.

Marot, anti-clerical poet, 359.

Marriage, approved by Clement of
Alexandria, 101 ; by the Greek
Church, 118 ; by Jovinian and
Vigilautius, 120 ; by the Paul-
icians, 127 ; by Bishop Clement
of Ireland, 128 ; by Henry of
Cluny, 141 ; by the Waldenses,
157 ; by Jean de Meung, 184 ;
by Erasmus, 337.

Marsilius, writer against the
papacy, 230.

Marsuppini, poet and unbeliever^
277.

Martial, 64.

Martin V., Pope, 280.

Martin, martyred mystic, 262.

Martin, tolerant bishop, 116, 118.

Martyr Justen, 84, 90. 108

Mary, the Bloody, 333.

Marzia, see Ordelaffi.

Masonic lodges, in 12th century,
229.

Masuccio, novelist, 282.

Materialism, of Anaximander and
Anaximenes, 4 ; of Heraclitus
and Empedocles, 6 ; of De-
mocritus, 12 ; of Strato and
Dicsearchus, Peripatetics, 35 ;
of the Stoics, 39 ; of Epi-
curus, 44, 45 ; of Lucretius,
53 ; of Tertullian, 98 ; of the

448

INDEX.

Averroists, 180, 280 ; of Pom-
ponatius, 288 ; of Rysswick,
319.

Mauclerc, nickname of an anti-pa-
pal nobleman, 193.

Maximilla, prophetess, 98.

May ij red, martyred mystic, 177.

Medici, 276, 279, 286— Lucretia
dei, 280.

Megaric skeptics, 29, 35.

Meqasthenes, early writer about In-
dia, 2.

Melanchthon approves of persecu-
tion, 346, 364.

Melchiorists, followers of Melchior
Hoffmann, and leaders at Milns-
ter, 342, 345, 346.

Melissus, an agnostic, 5.

Menno, peaceable Anabaptist, 346.

Mental Culture, advocated by So-
crates, 20 ; by Seneca, 71 ; by
Epictetus, 75 ; by Gnostics, 84 ;
by Clement of Alexandria, 100 ;
by Averroes, 153 ; by Pompona-
tius, 291 ; by Rabelais, 353 ; dis-
couraged by Christianity, 81,
84, 90, 97, 119, 180, 183, 272,
291, 318.

Merswin, Rudolph, Mystic, 224.

Messala, skeptical Platonist, 38, 64.

Messalina, as a politician, 77.

Metaphysics, ridiculed by Lucian,
93 ; by Rabelais, 355.

Melon, early astronomer, 8, 26.

Metrodoi'us, friend of Epicurus, 43.

Meung, Jean de, poet with advanced
ideas, 184.

Micah, prophet opposed to priests, 1.

Michael Angela, 279, 282, 293, 294.

Middle Ages, 268-274.

Mieul/x que Deviant, comedy, 302.

Milan, a Catharist center, 135, 137 ;
in strife with Frederic 1., 143 ;
under the anti-papal Visconti,
235.

Mill, J. 8., quoted, 78.

Millennium, 271-274.

Minnesingers, opposed to Rome,
179, 180.

Miracles, exposed by Huss, 251.

Monaaticism, a check on transmis-
sion of virtue, 108, 120, 125, 272 ;
proved corrupt in Parliament,
332 ; condemned by cardinals,
336 ; unfavorable to scholarship,
272, 316, 395 ; attributed lo the
devil by Wycliffe, 245 ; by Pro-

copius, 256 ; ridiculed by Ari-
osto, 283 ; by Wympheling, 311 ;
by Bebel, 313 ; by More, 316 ;
by Erasmus, 316, 317, 336, 337 ;
by Agrippa, 339 ; by Rabelais,
354, 355 ; by Lyndsay and Bu-
chanan, 361.

Monsegur, Catharist castle, 166,
171.

Montaigne, 361.

Montanists, heretics who permit
women to prophesy, 97, 98, 127.

Montefeltro, Battista de, learned
lady, 280.

Montfort, crusader against the Al-
bigenses. 165-168.

Montfort, patriotic earl of Leices-
ter, 195.

Morality, improved by skepticism,
20, 290, 398-400 ; natural to
man according to Pelagius,
120 ; to Sebastian Franck, 374 ;
placed above ceremony by He-
brew prophets, 1 ; by Jesus, 66-
68 ; by Paulicians, 126, 127 ; by
Catharists, 133-135 ; by Wal-
denses, 157 ; by Mystics, 221 ;
by Wycliffe, 245 ; by Hussites,
254 ; by Galeottus, 278 ; by
Mudt, 312 ; by Erasmus, 317 ;
by Savonarola, 320; by Anabap-
tists, 342 ; by Franck, 374 ; by
Schwenckfeld, 375 ; shown by
Erasmus, 338 ; Servetus, 365,
and Thamer, 373, to be holier
than faith.

Morat, Swiss victory, 304.

Moravians, derived from Hussites,
257.

More, Sir Thomas, 315, 332, 339.

Moreale, soldier of fortune, 229.

Morgante Maggiore, quoted, 282,
2»3.

Morgarten, battle of, 230, 304.

Moses, opposes Pharaoh, 1 ; is set
aside by Jesus, 66 ; is ridiculed
by Rysswick, 319 ; by Gruet,
377, 378.

Moslemism, more enlightened and
tolerant than medieval Christian-
ity, 110, 130, 131, 161, 189, 272 ;
but sometimes guilty of persecu-
tion, 153-156, 300.

Motn-jilite*, Moslem rationalists,
130, 131, 158.

Mother-taught, nickname of the
younger Aristippus, 30.

INDEX.

449

Mudt, Muth, or Mutianus Rufus,
champion of morality against
ceremony, 312.

Muhlberg, Lutheran defeat, 332.

Muhldorf, victory of Louis of Ba-
varia, 230.

Muhlhausen, Anabaptist defeat,
345.

Munster, Anabaptists at, 345, 346.

Munzer, Anabaptist leader, 345.

Munyer, le, farce, 302.

Muth, see Mudt.

Mutianus, Rufus, see Mudt.

Mysticism, defined, 155 ; inspires
Dante, 217-219; Rienzi, 226-
229 ; and Luther, 324, 325 ; unfit
basis for organization, 240, 241 ;
its medieval origin, 155-157.

Mystics, Neo-Platonists, 102 ; mar-
tyrs, 174-178, 202, 220-225, 261-
267, 319-325 ; persecutors, 148,
181 ; warriors against the church,
212, 213; revolutionists, 329,
342-346 ; reformers of Luther-
anism and Calvinism, 342, 373-
376, 379.

Names, pagan, take the place of
Christian, 298.

Nancy, Swiss victory at, 304.

Napks, with Frederic II. against
the pope, 188.

Nearchus, tyrant of Elea, 5.

Necessarianism, 330.

Negri, skeptical poet, 357.

Neo-Platonism, as originally held,
102-105 ; its revival attempted
by Gemistus Pletho, 276 ; its in-
fluence on Cornelius Agrippa,
313 ; on Paracelsus, 348 ; on
Servetus, 366.

Nero, and his victims, 62, 71-75 ;
allusions in the Apocalypse, 80,
89.

Nerva, rules constitutionally, 76,
96.

Nicma, Council of, 111, 112, 118.

Niccolini, his drama on Arnold of
Brescia, 143.

Nicene Creed, 111, 216.

Nicholas, of Autricuria, agnostic,
235.

Nicholas, of Basel, martyred mys-
tic, falsely supposed to have in-
structed Tauler, 225, 262.

Nicholas, of Verona, opponent of
transubstantiation, 278.

Nicholas IV , Pope, persecutes Ba-
con, 183.

Nicholas V., Pope, patron of the
Renaissance, 260, 276-278.

Nicias, ruined by his superstition.
9.

Nine Rocks, mystical book, 224.

Nobility, hereditary, assailed by
Seneca, 72 ; by Juvenal, 87 ; by
Freidank, 179 ; by Reinmar,
180 ; by Jean de Meung, 184 ;
by Poggio, 277 ; by Cornelius
Agrippa, 339 ; discarded at
Florence, 277.

Nogaret, William de, conqueror of
Boniface VIII., 204-207.

Nominalism, exposure of the un-
reality of abstractions, 103, 136,
137, 145, 234, 257.

Novara, Georgio, Unitarian martyi,
281.

Nude, study of the, 293, 294,

OatJi, to suppress Lollardism, 247.

Obscure Men, Letters of, 310, 311.

Occam, see Ockham.

Oceanic discovery, 296.

Ochino, a Unitarian, 371, 372.

Ockham, anti-papal author, 205,
218, 234 ; his nominalism and
agnosticism, 234.

Octavia, patron of Virgil, 77.

Octavius, see Augustus.

Odenathus, husband of Zenobia,
104, 105.

(Edipus, 41.

Oldcastle, Sir John, Lollard mar-
tyr and original of Falstaff,
250.

Old Testament, censured by Julian,
114 ; by Erasmus, 338 ; rejected
by Gnostics, 84 ; by Paulicians,
126 ; by Catharists, 134.

Olgiati, assassin of Duke of Milan,
279.

Oliva, Peter John, anti-papal Fran-
ciscan, 177.

Ophites, Gnostic serpent worship-
ers, 84.

Orator of Death, name given to
Hegesias the Cyrenaic, 30.

Ordeal, opposed by Bishop Ago-
bard, 129 ; used to detect here-
tics, 172. 175 ; forbidden by
Frederick II. , 189 ; appealed to
by Savonarola, 322.

Ordelqffi, Francesco, and Marzia,

450

INDEX.

at war with popes and crusaders,
236, 237.

Order of Nature, taught by Democ-
ritus 12 ; by Cleanthes, 40 ; by
Epicurus, 44, 45 : by Lucretius,
53 ; by Averroists, 180 ; by Aris-
totle, 291 ; by Pomponatius, 291 ;
by Cardan, 351.

Origen, Christian rationalist, 90,
101, 128, 390.

Orphans, party among the Huss-
ites, 255-257.

Ot*tlieb, mystic heresiarch, 175.

Otho, emperor supported by the
senate, 79,

Ovid, why banished, 63.

Oxford, Provisions of, in confirma-
tion of Magna Charta 195.

Oxford theologians, against Wy-
cliffe, 247.

Pacuvius, Epicurean poet, 51.

Paditta, Spanish patriot, 341.

Padua, center of Averroism, 280,
358.

Pcetus, see Poetus.

Painting, 292-295, 302.

Palingenius, skeptical poet, 357.

Pancettus, Stoic who opposed
augury, 40.

Pandects, discovered in Italy, 142.

Pandolf, Roman republican, 229.

Pantanus, teacher of Clement of
Alexandria, 99, 100.

Pantagruel's prayer, 353.

Pantheism, of Xenophanes, 5 ; of
Erigena, 129 ; of Amalric, 157,
174, 175 ; of Eckhart and other
German mystics, 221-223 ; of
Servetus, 366.

Papacy, a logical development of
Christianity, 68, 69, 83, 270, 271 ;
attacked by Marsilius, 230 ; by
Ocklmm, 234 ; by Wycliffe,
248 ; by Huss, 252 ; by Luther,
328 ; censured by medieval satir-
ists, 178-180 ; by Dante, 214-
217 ; by Tauler, 224, 225 ; by
Langland, 242 ; by Machiavelli,
287, 356 ; by Hutten, 310 ; by
Erasmus, 316, 318 ; by Savona-
rola, 321 ; by Cornelius Agrippa,
339 ; claimed by a woman, 177 ;
claims absolute power, 201, 203,
204, 327 ; disgraced by immoral-
ity, 207, 287, 296, 297, 341 ; in
captivity at Avignon, 207 ;

propped up by fraud ,130, 273; re-
sisted by John of England, 185,
186 ; by Frederic II., 187, 188,
190, 191 ; by Louis IX., 194 ; by
Philip the Fair, 203-206; by
Louis of Bavaria, 232, 233 ; by
Visconti, 235 ; byOrdelaffi, 236,
237 ; by Parliament, 238, 243,
349, 332 ; by Florence, 243 ; by
Bohemia, 253-257 ; by Councils,
257-260 ; by Caterina Sforza,
280, 281 ; by Louis XII., 305 ;
ridiculed by Andrelini, 306-310 ;
Rabelais, 354.

Paphnutius, saves Eastern Church
from sarcerdotal celibacy, 118.

Paracelsus, the Luther of medicine,
347-349.

Paris, center of medieval learning,
144.

Paris, George van, Unitarian mar-
tyr, 364.

Parker, Theodore, compared to
Tauler, 225.

Parliament, admits representatives
of cities, 195 ; at war with
Henry III., 195 ; deposes Rich-
ard II., 249 ; resists papacy, 238,
242-244, 249, 332; the Good
Parliament, 243 ; the Mad Par-
liament, 194.

Parmenides, skeptic, noted for
virtue, 4, 29.

Parson's Tale, not by Chaucer, 249.

Pastoral visits, established at Gen-
eva, 334.

Paterines, Italian Catharists, 135.

Paul II., Pope, 279, 281, 297.

Paul HI., Pope, 336.

PawZ/F.,Pope, 336.

Paul, the Apostle, 67, 78-82, 85,
103, 107, 114, 115, 122, 126, 338,
393.

Paulicians, liberal Christian sect,
126-128.

Payne, English Taborite, 256.

Peasants, as rebels, 110, 122, 144,
163, 188, 212, 213, 230, 237, 245-
247, 251, 253-357, 269, 304, 305,
342-345 ; as warriors otherwise,
304.

Pecock, rationalistic bishop,299-301.

Pedro II. , King of Arragon and
protector of Catharism, 164-167.

Pelagius, heretic who teaches
that virtue is natural to man,
120, 121.

INDEX.

451

Pelerin Passant, satire on Louis
XII 305.

Pelopidas, ruined by superstition*
9.

Peregrinus Proteus, hero of Lu-
cian's satire on Christianity, 91.

Peretto, nickname of Pomponatius,
288.

Pericles, persecuted for following
Anaxagorasand Protagoras, 7-9,
14.

Peripatetics, see Aristotle, also 35,
38, 44, 90, 99.

Perrin, judge friendly to Servetus
at Geneva, 369.

Persecution, fatal to Phidias, 8, 9 ;
to Socrates, 24 ; to Oremutiua
Cordus, 70 ; to Thrasea, 74 ; to
Ignatius, 87 ; to Poly carp, 90 ;
to Origen. 101, 109 ; toHypatia,
114 ;'to Priscillian, 117 ; to Pau-
licians, 127 ; to Catharists, 131-
133, 138, 164-166, 169-174 ; to
Mystics, 174-177, 221, 255, 261 ;
to Cecco of Ascoli, 235 ; to Lol-
lards, 250 ; to Huss, 253, 259 ;
to Joan of Arc, 267; to Ryss-
wick, 319 ; to Savonarola, 322 ;
to Anglican Protestants, 332,
333 ; to Anabaptists, 342, 345,
363, 304 ; to Dolet, 358 ; to Ser-
vetus, 369 ; to other Unitarian?,
281, 364, 372 ; to Gruet, 379 ;
ruinous to Athenian liberty, 9,
10 ; to Roman literature, 64 ;
sanctioned by the Bible, 69, 80,
81. 122, 264, 315, 378.

Persians, tolerant to philosophy, 7.

Peter Martyr, assassinated inquisi-
tor, 172.

Peter of .Brute, reformer and mar-
tyr, 140, 141, 160.

Peter, the Apostle, 78-82, 103, 104,
114, 116, 123, 126, 149, 309, 313

Peter, see also Pierre and Pietro.

Petrarch, pioneer of the Renais-
sance, 207, 235, 275, 276, 280.

Pfefferkom, persecutor of Judaism,
311.

Phcedo, skeptical disciple of Socra-
tes, 29.

Pharisees, 67.

Phidias, persecuted for philosophy,
8, 9.

Philip Augustus, 185, 186.

Philip, of Hesse, champion of the
Reformation, 330-332, 345, 346.

Philip, the Fair, conqueror of
Pope Boniface VIII., 201-211,
217, 220.

Philip, the Magnanimous, see Phil-
ip of Hesse.

Philiscus, banished for teaching
Epicureanism, 49.

Philodemus, Epicurean, 50.

Philosophy, compared to one of the
plagues of Egypt, 119.

Philpot, persecutor and martyr,
365.

Philumene, learned Gnostic author-
ess, 85.

Physicians, their services to free-
dom, 347, 393.

Pico, of Mirandola, rationalist, 279,
280, 315.

Picquigny, Jean de, assailant of the
Inquisition. 220.

Pierre, of Saint Cloud, an author of
Heynard the Fox, 178.

Piers Plowman's Vision, 242.

Piers Plowman '* Crede, 249.

Pietro, of Abano, (skeptical physi-
cian, 202,235.

Pisa, first Council of, 257, 258 ;
second, 305, 309 315.

Pms//.,260, 286.

Pius III., 297.

Plato, dialogues, 14, 24-27, 77, 107,
156 ; influence during Middle
Ages, 128, 156 ; influence at
Renaissance, 275, 276, 279, 280 :
thought inspired, 100, 374 ; and
infallible, 102, 103 ; honored
like Jesus, 85 ; life, 27, 28.

Platonic Academy, 279.

Platonism, skeptical, 28, 38, 386.

Platonists, 28, 38, 44, 90, 92, 103,
128, 276, 279.

Pletho, reviver of Neo-Platonism,
276.

Pliny, the naturalist, 62-64, 290.

Pliny, the younger, 64, 85-88.

Plotinus, Neo-Platonist, 102, 103.

Plutarch, influence at Renaissance,
275, 276, 279 ; misrepresents
Epicurus, 46 ; writings other-
wise, 77, 85. 86, 96.

Podiebrad, George, tolerant king of
Bohemia, 260.

Patus, husband of Arria, 70.

Poqgw, free-speaking scholar, 277,
278, 298, 335.

Poland, tolerant, 372.

Polybius, 38.

452

INDEX.

Polyhistor, Alexander, 2.

Political liberty, closely connected
with religious liberty, 391, 394,
395 ; defended by Thales, 4 ; by
Zeno the skeptic, 5 ; by Emped-
ocles, 6, 7 ; by Stoics, 39, 70-76,
86-89, 96 ; by Plutarch and
Tacitus, 86 ; by Donatists, 110 ;
by Arnold, 142, 143 ; by French,
German and Italian cities, 143,
162, 193 ; by Caputiati, 144 ; by
Jean de Meung, 185 ; by Rienzi,
225-228 ; by Walter the Tyler,
246, 247 ; by Hussites, 254 ; by
Humanists, 278-279 ; by Cade,
304, 305 ; by More, 316 ; by
Savonarola, 321 ; by German
peasants, 342-345 ; by LaBoetie,
Knox, Poynet, and Aylmer, 351 ;
by Lyndsay, 361 ; by Hutten
and Sickingen, 363 ; opposed by
Plato, 27 ; in the New Testa-
ment, 66, 79.

Pollio, founder of first public
library at Rome, 59, 64.

Polycarp, Christian martyr, 83, 90.

Pomponatius, skeptic, 287, 291,
297.

Pontano, anti-papal satirist, 282.

Poor Men of Lyons, or Waldenses,
157.

Poor Priests, Lollard itinerants,
245.

Popular Education, among Wal-
denses, 158 ; among Hussites,
254 ; more common in Moslem
than in Christian lands, 272.

Porcaro, Roman Patriot, 278.

Porphyry, rationalist and biblical
critic, 103-106, 116, 124.

Porretta, Margaret, martyred mys-
tic, 221.

Portia, the Stoic heroine, 39, 77,
80.

Pofddonius, Stoic honoring mechan-
ical invention, 107.

Postel, defender of natural religion,
380.

Poverty of Jesus, considered abso-
lute by Dante and the Francis-
can mystics, 218-220.

Poynet, Bishop, advocate of regi-
cide, 351.

Praque, revolts against the pope,
251-255.

Pwmitmre. Statute of, a check on
papal power, 238, 249.

Pragmatic Sanctions, anti-papal

measures, 194, 260.
Prick of Conscience, early English

book, 237.

Printing, 292, 302, 303.
Prisdllian, first martyr under

Christian rule, 117, 118, 122,

125.
Procopius, Hussite general. 255-

257.
Prodicus, Sophist and moralist, 15,

21.
Promiscuous charity, censured, 71,

120.
Property, incompatible with Golden

Age, 185.
Protestants, first called so, 331. See

also Reformation.
Protagoras, first Sophist, 14, 15.
Provisions of Oxfo?'d, confirm

Magna Charta, 194, 195.
Provisors, Statute against, passed

to check papal aggression, 238,

249.
Ptolemy Soter, king of Egypt and

patron of science, 36, 57.
Ptolemy, the astronomer, criticised

by Bacon, 182 ; by Copernicus,

Pulci, skeptical poet, 280, 282.

Pungiloro, Catharist thought
worthy of canonization, 173.

Pyrrho, founder of sect of Skep-
tics, 36, 37, 57, 114, 123, 398,
400, 401.

Pythagoras, not a free-thinker, 4 ;
his influence over Plato, 25, 27 ;
honored like Jesus, 85 ; super-
stition,313; system of astronomy,
58, 259, 286.

Quarto-decimans, heretics, 117.

Rabelais, imprisoned for studying
Greek, 352 ; real position, 352,
356 ; ridicule of Lent, metaphys-
ics, mouasticism and the papacy.
354, 355 ; suggestions about
education, 353.

Rabirim, an Epicurean poet, 50.

Rambam, name given to Maimoni-
dcs. 154.

Ramus, critic of Aristotle, 350.

Raphael, 293, 294.

Rationalism, of Greek and Romao
philosophers, 4-60, 71, 75, 91-
1)0, 103-106; of Gnostics, 84, 85;

INDEX.

453

of Clement of Alexandria, 100 ;
of Origen, 101 ; of Eunomians
and Manicheans, 117, 118 ; of
Erigena, 129 ; of Berengar, 135;
of Roscellin, 136 ; of Abelard,
144, 145, 149, 150 : of Averro'es,
153 ; of Maimonides, 154 ; of
Simon of Tournay, 160 ; of
Catharists, 174 ; of Averroists,
180, 235, 280 ; of Farinata, 183 ;
of Frederic II., 189, 190 ; of
Ockham and his contemporaries,
234, 235; of Pulci, 282, 283 ;
of Leonardo da Vinci, 283-286 ;
of Pomponatius, 287-291 ; of
Pecock, 299-301 ; of Ray-
mond, 300 ; Mudt, 312 ; Eras-
mus, 318, 329, 338 ; of Ryss-
wick, 319 ; of Agrippa, 339 ; of
Rabelais, 356 ; of Dolet, 358 ;
of Hutten, 362 ; of Servetus,
365, 366 ; of Gruet and other un-
believers, 377-380 ; favorable to
morality, 20, 290, 398-400.

Rationalists in Politics, 391-395.

Raymond, of Sabieude, or Sabunde,
rationalist, 300.

Raymond Roger, persecuted vis-
count of Beziers, 164, 165.

Raymond VI. , Count of Toulouse,
persecuted for tolerance, 164-
168,187.

Raymond VIL, son of Raymond

. VI., 168, 169.

Ravenna, early heresy at, 131 .

Realism, 103, 136, 137, 144.

Red flag of Liberty, 226, 243, 344.

Reformation, causes, 325-328, limi-
tations, 329, 331, 333, 347, 370,
373 ; progress in Germany, 328-
332, 373-376 ; in England, 332,
333; in Switzerland, 331-335,
372 ; and in other countries,
335.

Regenbogen, liberal German poet,
183.

Regicide, advocated by Seneca, 73,
and by Bishop Poynet, 351.

Reign of the Spirit, 155, 176, 177,
225-229, 261.

Reinmar, singer of new truth, 180.

Relic-worship, opposed by Joviniau
and Vigilantius, 120.

Religion, attacked by Epicurus and
Lucretius, 142.

Renato, censures the murder of
Servetus, 371, 372.

Renouncing, when perjury, 252.
Reuchlin, founder of Christian

study of the old Testament, 311,

313.

Revelation, of John, its meaning, 80.
Revival of Letters, 275-283.
Reynard the Fox, the unholy bible,

178, 184, 303.

Riario, tyrant of Forli, 280.
Richard I. , of England, dies under

the ban, 185.

Richard II. , deposed by Parlia-
ment, 249.

Ridley, Protestant martyr, 333.
Robin Hood, a real character, 195.
Roger Bernard, early advocate

of religious liberty, 168.
Roger, heretical viscount of Beziers,,

139, 140.

Rogers, Protestant martyr, 333.
Rohan, Adamite leader, 255.
Rolle, Richard, writer against

Rome, 237.
Rome, republican, 38, 49-57, 60 ;

imperial, 61-64, 70-78, 85-91,.

106-109, 116 ; in revolt against

the papacy, 141, 143, 187, 231,

232, 278, 336 ; liberated by

Rienzi, 225-229 ; visited by

2,000,000 pilgrims; 196 ; fall.

from power "prophesied, 155,

180, 302, 303, 310.
Romans, Epistle to tlie, censured by

Erasmus, 338.
Roscellin, Nominalist, 136, 137,.

144, 147.

Rose, Romance of the, 184.
Roses, Wars of the, 298.
Rowe, translator of Lucan, quoted,

73.

Rubianus, Crotus, see Jager.
Rufus, champion of right of

women to study philosophy, 75.
Runnymede, Magna Charta signed

there, 186.
Rutebozuf, anti-monastic satirist,

183.
Rysswick, martyred rationalist, 319.

Sabbath, ridiculed by Juvenal, 87.
See also Sunday.

Sabellianism, 147, 365, 372.

Saccas, see Ammonius Saccas.

Sachsenhausen, protest at, 230.

Sadaucees, 69, 83.

St. John, Knights of, see Hospi-
tallers.

454

INDEX.

Saladin, 154, 159.

Salinguerra, anti-papal soldier,
183.

Salutato, Coluccio, defender of
classic poetry against the monks,
276.

Samos, philosophers of, 4, 42, 58.

Sanitary laws, punishment for pro-
posing, 347.

Sankhya philosophy, 3.

Sannazzaro, anti-papal satirist, 282.

Satirists, English, 242, 249, 316 ;
French, 178, 183-185, 305-310,
352-360; German, 179, 303,
310, 313, 339, 340, 362 ; Greek,
6, 91-95 ; Italian, 277, 282, 283,
356, 357 ; Roman, 74, 77, 87 ;
Scotch, 360-362 ; Erasmus, 316-
318, 336, 337.

JSautre, Lollard martyr, 250.

Savonarola, 315, 319-322.

Schism, the great, 244-5, 258.

Schmidt, Conrad, martyred mystic,
261.

JSchwenckfeld, champion of morality
against theology "and ceremony,
375.

Schwestriones, German mystics,
222.

Schwytz, at War with the Church,
141, 142.

Sdarra Colonna, enemy of the
pope, 205-207, 231. •

Scientific methods, advocated by
Ionic philosophers, 3-9 ; by
Democritus, 12 ; by Hippo-
crates. 13 ; by Aristotle, 32, 33 ;
by Stoics, 40 ; by Epicurus, 44,
45 ; by Lucretius, 52 ; by Lu-
cilius, 62 ; by Pliuy, 62, 63 ;
by Galen, 91 ; by Rojrer Bacon,
181-183 ; in liomance of the Rose,
185 ; by Pietro of Abano, 202 ;
by Nicholas of Autricuria, 235 ;
by Leonardo da Vinci, 284-286 ;
by Paracelsus, 347, 348 ; by
"Vesalius, 349 ; by Copernicus
and Vives, 350; by Cardan, 350 ;
351 ; summary of the above,
:5S.~>, 386.

Scott, Michael, an Averroist, 180,
189, 217.

Scotus, see Erigena.

Secret Societies, 95.

Segarelli, martyred mystic, 177,
212.

•Stmpach, peasant victory, 304.

Senate, a persecutor of philosophy,

38 ; refuge of Roman liberty,

63, 73-75, 77, 79, 86, 88, 96.
Seneca, 39, 44, 64, 70-75, 107, 123,

182, 275, 290.
Sens, Council of, 152.
Sepulveda, defender of right to

conquer the heathen, 347.
Servetus, Unitarian martyr, 365-

369.

Servdia, Stoic martyr, 75, 77.
Sextus Empiricus, skeptic, 37, 99.
Sforza, Caterina, 280, 281.
Sforza, Galeazzo, tyrant of Milan,

279.

Sforza, Ippolita, learned lady, 280.
Shakespeare, Italian materials, 282;

injustice to Jack Cade, 304, 305.
Sharp, Jack, English rebel, 251.
Sibylline books, destroyed by

Augustus, 64 ; others forged by

Christians, 89.
Sic et Non, skeptical treatise by

Abelard, 149, 150.
Sicilian philosophy, 6, 7 ; legisla-
tion of Frederic II., 188, 189 ;

vespers, 192, 193.
Sickingen, ally of Hutten, 362,

363.
Sigier, teacher of hated truth,

217.
Sigismund, convokes council of

Constance, 258 : makes war on

Bohemia, 253-257.
Sigismund, tolerant king of Poland,

372.

Simeon, Paulician martyr, 127.
Simon, of Tournay, rationalist, 160.
Siricius, pope, favorable to celib-
^ acy, 118.

Sisterers, heretical mystics, 222.
Sixtus IV., pope, tolerant, 278 ;

immoral, 297.
Skepticism, favorable to happiness,

30, 37, 400, 401; productive of

virtue, 20, 290, 398-400.
Skeptics, members of the sect, 36,

37, 99, 114; Lucian, 91-96 ;

Abelard, 150 ; Frederic II. , 189,

190 ; Ocklmm, 234 ; Pompona-

tius, 287-291 ; Erasmus, 318,

329, 338 ; Rysswick, 319 ;

Agrippa, 339 ; Rabelais, 356 ;

Dolet, 358 ; Gruet, 377-379. See

also Rationalism.
Slavery, denounced by Dion Chry-

sostom, 76 ; by Donutists, 110 ;

INDEX.

455

sanctioned by Aristotle, 33 ; by
New Testament, 79; position of
Socrates, 18 ; of Seneca, 71-73 ;
of Las Casas, 347.

Social equality, see Equality.

Socinus Lcdius, Unitarian, '372.

Socrates, 14-29, 84, 122, 386.

Soissons, Council of, 147, 148.

Solo, Doctor da, anti-Christian
astrologer, 281.

Song of Solomon, called immoral,
370.

Sophia, the Wisdom, nickname of
Protagoras, 14.

Sophists, viudfeated against mis-
representation, 14-16.

Soramts, Stoic martyr, 75.

Svrcevy, 232.

Speech, freedom of, claimed by
Socrates, 19, 20 ; by the Cynics,
30-32, 75 ; by Jesus, 65 ; by
Helvidius, 75 ; by Cremutius
Cordus, 86 ; by Reinmar, 180 ;
by Bishop Pecock, 300 ; by
More, 316 ; by Erasmus 337 ;
by Rabelais, 353 ; by Dolet,
358 ; by Servetus, 368 ; by
Bourgogne, 371 ; by Renato,
371 ; by Biinderlin, 376 ; by
Gruet, 377 ; permitted by Athens,
35 ; by Julius Ca3sar, 50, 63 ;
by Roman Republic, 59 ; by
Stoic emperors, 87 ; by Qathar-
ists, 135, 139 ; by Tabo/ites,
257 ; by popes, 281, 282 ; by
Louis XII., 305. —

Speusippus, a Platonist, 28.

Spifame, practical reformer, 347. *

Spirit, age of the, 155, 176, 177,
212, 225-229, 343.

Spirit, Brothers and Sisters of the
Free, 221, 222, 261, 377.

Spirituaks, Franciscan mystics,
218.

Stabat Mater, 220.

Stafford, tries to kill Joan of Arc,
265.

States General resist the Pope, 203;
condemn the Templars, 209.

Staupitz, instructor of Luther, 324.

Stedingers, peasants at war with
knights and priests, 163, 188.

StencJffeld, nickname of Schwenck-
feld, 375.

Stephen, Catharist martyr, 132.

Stilpo, skeptic, 29.

Stoics, as teachers, 38-41, 58, 93, 94,

99 ; as martyrs for liberty, 70-
76 ; as rulers, 85-90,

Strasburg, opposed to interdict,
231 ; masonic center, 229 ; mys-
tics, 175, 176, 221, 224, 261, 262,
375, 376.

Strato, atheistic Peripatetic, 35.

Stylites, Simeon, hermit, 108.

Suetonius, 85, 86

Sufism, 156.

Suger, liberal abbot, 148.

Sulpicia, satirist, 77.

Sulpicius, philosophic priest, 40.

Summary, of ancient history, 122-
125 ; of thirteenth century, 196-
199 ; of Middle Ages, 268-274 ;
of Reformation, 380-384 ; of
scientific positivism, 385, 386 ;
of philosophic skepticism, 386,
387 ; of mysticism, 387 ; of
growth of tolerance, 387-389 ;
of emancipation of women, 389-
391 ; of rise of political liberty,
391 ; of biblical criticism, 396,
397.

Tabor, Hussite citv, noted for tol-
erance, 254, 257.

Tabor ties, 254-257.

Tacitus,' 77, 85, 86, 96.

Talbot, "conquered by Joan of Arc,
263.

Talmud, not to be studied by
jOhristians, 183, 201, 311.

Tanchelm, heretical enthusiast,
140, 155.

Tauler, independent mystic, 224, .
262.

Taxing nobility and clergy pro-

, posed in vain, 347.

Tell, William, 230.

Templars, not heretics, but not in-
nocent of crime, 188, 201, 208-
211.

Tephrica, the Paulician capital, 127.

Tertullian, as a reactionist, 97, 98,
121, 124.

Thales, founder of Greek philoso-
phy, 3.

Thamer, champion of morality
against Lutheranism, 372, 373.

Theano, wife of Pythagoras and
writer on philosophy, 4.

Theater, at work for freedom, 6,
11, 51, 282, 302, 305, 359-361.

Thelema, Abbey of, 354.

Theodosius, as a persecutor, 116, 117

456

INDEX.

Thibaud, tolerant crusader, 179.

Theodore, the Atheist 30.

2Jheologasier, farce, 359.

Theologia Germanica, 224, 261,
32-").

T/teopkilus, destroyer of the Alex-
andriau library, 116.

Theophrast, opposes sacrifices, 35.

Thirty tyrants at Athens, 17, 21.

T/trasea, martyr for liberty, 70, 74-
70, 79, 88, 96.

Thrasybulus, liberator of Athens,
16.

Thucydides, 7, 9, 38.

Tiberius, G4, 65, 70, 77, 79, 96.

Tibullus, independent poet, 64.

Timaus, Plato's, 103, 156.

Times, published where Wycliffe
was condemned, 247, 248.

Titian, 173.

Tiziano, disbeliever in the Bible,
380.

Todi, Jacopone da, mystic, 220.

Tolerance, practiced by Budd-
hists, 2 ; by Persians, 7 ; by
Athenians, 35, 43, 60 ; by Mace-
donians, 44 ; by Julius Caesar,
60 ; by Roman republic, 59 ; by
Jews, 83 ; by Hadrian and An-
toninus Pius, 87 ; by Zenobia,
105 ; by Coustantine, 110 ; by
Julian, 113 ; by Moslems, 130,
131 ; by Languedocians, 135,
138, 162, 164, 168 ; by Frederic
II., 188, 181) ; by Philip the Fair,
202, 203 ; by Taborites, 257 ; by
Renaissance popes, 281 , 282 ; by
Louis XII., 305; by Philip of
Hesse, 332 ; by Bavaria, Austria,
Bohemia, Poland, and Venice,
-335, 365, 372 ; by Margaret of
Navarre, 340 ; taught by Stoics,
72 ; by Tacitus, 86 ; by Hilde-
gard, 155 ; by Reiumar, 180 ; in
Orcliard Vision, 302 ; by More,
316 ; by Erasmus, 337 ;" by Ra-
belais, 353, 35.-) ; by Dolet, 358 ;
by Servetus, 368 ; by many who
regretted his death, 369, 372 ;
by Frauck, 373, 374 ; by Biinder-
lin, 375 ; its growth corresponds
to that of unbelief, 389.

Trajan. 86-88, 108, 216,217.

Transcendentalism, defined, 102 ;
Neo-Platonic, 102, 103; Chris-
tian, 156. 160,223, 299, 374.

Transubstantiation, attacked by

Erigena, 129 ; by Berengar, 135 ;
by Wycliffe, 247 ; by Hanska,
255 ; by Nicholas of Verona,
278; by Zwinirli, 363 ; by Anne
Ascue, 332. 333 ; by other En-
glish martyrs, 364.

Trent, Council of, 336.

Triangle, showing where medie-
val thought was most active, 240.

Trissino, anti-clerical poet, 357.

Troubadours, 154, 1«2, 178, 179.

Turlupins, heretic mystics, 261.

Twelve Articles, of the peasants,
343.

Tyler, Walter the, §46, 247.

Tyre, Old Man of, see Porphyry.

Ulftlas, translator of the Bible, 116.

Understanding, Men of, heretical
mystics, 261.

Unitarianism, of the Artemonites,
97 ; of Arians, 111 ; of Cathur-
ists, 134 ; of Georgio Novaro,
281 ; of Campanus, 363 ; of
Hetzer, Joan Bocher, and
George van Paris, 364 ; of Ser-
vetus, 365-370 ; of Gribaldi,
Gentilis, and Blandrata, 372 ; of
Denck, 376.

Universalism, of Carpocrates, 85 ;
of Origen, 101 ; Erigena, 129 ;
of Catharists, 139 ; of Pierre
Cardinal, 179 ; of Strasburg
Communists, 221 ; of Men of
Understanding, 261 ; of Ana-
baptists, 342 ; of John Denck,
376.

Universities, English, 247, 298 ;
German, 251, 803 ; Italian, 190,
272, 280, 287, 358 ; Paris, 160,
162, 174, 257 ; Prague, 251, 252.

Urban V- , Pope, resisted by Par-
liament, 242.

Utilitarianism, of Democritus, 13 ;
of Protagoras, 14 ; of Socrates,
18, 19 ; of Plato, 27 ; of Aris-
tippus. 29 ; of Aristotle, 3-)>, 34 ;
of Stoics, 39, 40, 75 ; of Epicu-
rus, 45-48 ; of Valla, 276, 277 ;
of Pomponatius, 290 ; of More,
316.

Utopia, 315, 316.

Utraquism, or right of all Chris-
tians to communion cup, 253.

Valens, opponent of Monasticism,
108 ; persecutor, 115.

INDEX.

457

Valentine, Gnostic, 85.

Valla, independent scholar, 276,
277.

Varro, defender of religion as ex-
pedient to the community, 38, 59.

Vatican, the prison of Boniface
VIII., 206, 220 ; enriched with a
library, 276 ; turned into a
harem, 297.

Vaticanus, nom de plume of Bolsec,
371.

Veiento, banished for attacking
priests, 62.

Venice, noted for tolerance, 173,
335, 365, 389 ; for Averroism,
235 ; for printing, 292.

Venus, displeased at chastity, 41.

Vergerio, too tolerant Protestant,
372.

Vernias, Averroist, £80.

Vesalius, disproves Galen's infalli-
bility, 349.

Vicenza, noted for Unitarianism,
365.

Vida-l, troubadour, 154.

Vidal, Jewish rationalist, 235.

Vienne, Council of, 207, 210.

Vigilantius, assails monasticism,
sacerdotal celibacy, and indis-
criminate charity, 120.

Vilyard, mysterious heretic, 131.

Villena, Averroist, 280.

Villeneuve, see Servetua.

Vinci, Leonardo da, 283-286.

Virgil, liberal bishop, 128.

Virgil, the poet, 56, 63, 77, 131.

Virgins, Champions of the, 172,
173.

Vischer, Peter, 302.

Vixconti, oppose pope, 235.

Vision of Piers Plowman, 242.

Vitellius, 79.

Vive*, assails Aristotle's infallibil-
ity, 350.

Waldenses, founded by Waldo,

157, 158 ; inclined to mysticism,

158, 175, 229, 261 ; persecuted,
165. 175. 176, 189,202,229, 261.

Wallace, 200.

Walter of the Vogelweide, anti-
papal poet, 179.

Walter, founder of the Lollard
sect of mystics, 221.

Walter, the Tyler, rebel leader,
246, 247.

War, opposed by Jesus, 66 ; by

early Christians, 108 ; by Dante,
215 ; by Langland, 242 ; by
Huss, 251 ; by Christine de Pi-
san, 301 ; by author of Orchard
Vision, 302 ; by Andrelini, 309 ;
by Las Casas, 346, 347 ; by
Franck, 373.

Weavers, name given to the Albi-
genses, 135.

Weeping Philosopher, nickname of
Heraclitus, 5.

Weinsberg, massacre at, 344.

Wesel, John of, persecuted mystic,
323, 324.

Wewl, John, mystic, 324.

Westminster, Statutes of, confirm
Magiw Charla, 195.

White Cross, Knight of the, noted
for tolerance, 224, 278 .

Wilhelmina, mystic Messiah, 177.

William, of Champeaux, Realist,
144, 146.

William, of Hildesheim, mystic,
charged with Universalism, 261.

William, of Ockham, see Ockham.

William, of St. Amour, opponent
of monasticism, 181.

William Rvfus, 136.

William, the Conqueror, 135.

William, the Goldsmith, pantheis-
tic mystic, 175.

Wirikeiers, Waldensian mystics,
261.

Witchcraft, existence denied by
Agobard, 129 ; by Alciati, 351;
often punished in 15th and 16th
centuries, 281, 334.

Women, as authors, 4, 43, 77, 151,
155 , 301 ; as heretics, 132, 166,
177, 261 ; as philosophers, 4, 7,
30, 32, 43, 76, 77, 99, 100, 120,
280; as rulers, 105, 268, 340, 341,
359; as soldiers, 168, 171, 212,
236, 237, 254, 263, 281, 345 ;
completely emancipated in pagan
Rome, 77, 78, 87, 96 ; sent back
to subjection by the apostle?. 78,
79 ; permitted to preach by here-
tics, 97, 98, 157, 254; looked to
for a new Messiah, 177, 380 ;
entitled to mental culture ac-
cording to Seneca, 71, 72 ; to
Plutarch, 77, 86; to Clement of
Alexandria, lOii; to Averroes,
154 ; to Pierre Dubois, 205 ; to
Chaucer, 250 ; to Cornelius
Agrippa, 313-315; to Erasmus,

458

INDEX.

337 ; furnished with schools,
303, 304 ; their emancipation
closely connected with growth of
intellectual liberty, 389-391, 402.

Worms, Diet of, 363.

Worship, forbidden as immoral, 57.

Wiirtemberg, conquest of, 331, 332.

Wydiffe, founder of Protestantism,
241 ; tried for heresy, 244, 259;
his reforms, 245, 248 ; his in-
fluence in Bohemia, 251.

WympJieling, on monks, 311.

Xanthippe, her ill temper exagger-
ated, 17.

Xenocrates, Platonist, 28.

Xenophanes, early Pantheist, 4, 5,
7, 29.

Xenophon, account of Socrates, 17*
20 ; own character, 22.

Tellow cross, imposed on heretics,
170.

Zebedee, tolerant Calvinist, 369.
Zeno, the skeptic, 5,
Zeno, the Stoic, 29, 38-40, 46.
Zenobia, 104-106, 124, 388.
Zizka, Hussite general, 253-255,

269.

Zoroaster, honored like Jesus, 85.
Zurkinden, advocate of tolerance,

370.

Zwickau, Prophets of, 343.
Zwingli, 331, 363.

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